


bullet in a gun (but in the end, my time will come)

by voxofthevoid



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: All the Steve Rogerses, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captain America Steve Rogers, Comic Book Science, Commander Rogers, Dimension Travel, Dominance and Submission, Double Penetration, M/M, Minor Steve Rogers/Steve Rogers, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Prayer Circle for Bucky's Asshole, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rimming, Selfcest, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22981930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: It’s a very normal morning on a very normal Thursday when Steve Rogers pops into existence on Bucky’s patio.With the kind of things Bucky has seen and the life he leads, this wouldn’t usually be cause for concern. Steve gets up to all kinds of shit with the Pym particles these days – something about time travel having inter-dimensional consequences. And since Steve exchanged Grant for Responsibility sometime between lying on army enlistment forms and crashing a plane into the Arctic, he’s running around under the careful watch of Hank Pym and Stephen Strange, doing things Bucky takes care not to ask about.But the Steve Rogers that pops into existence on Bucky’s patio is not the right Steve Rogers.He’s dressed all in black, for one thing.He’s got a metal arm, for another.-Post-Thanos, Bucky Barnes has happily settled into a life of peace and pining. That's when alternate versions of the best friend he's secretly in love with start showing up.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Steve Rogers/James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 503
Kudos: 1714
Collections: Stucky: Canon Divergence, StuckyAUs, Sweet and Gentle Steve/Bucky





	1. you break me down, you build me up

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t watched – nor do I intend to watch – any MCU movie/show after _Endgame_ , so whatever has been revealed as canon past that is unknown to me. Plus, this isn’t compliant to _Endgame_ either, so the worldbuilding details scattered throughout are conjectures born out of wishful thinking.
> 
> Got a [tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/) if you're into that thing ;)
> 
>  **Edit, 30th May, 2020:** [kocuria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria) made image edits for this fic!! You can find her on tumblr [here!](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/)

It’s a very normal morning on a very normal Thursday when Steve Rogers pops into existence on Bucky’s patio.

With the kind of things he’s seen and the life he leads, this wouldn’t usually be cause for concern. Steve gets up to all kinds of shit with the Pym particles these days. Something about time travel having inter-dimensional consequences. And since Steve exchanged Grant for Responsibility sometime between lying on army enlistment forms and crashing a plane into the Arctic, he’s running around under the careful watch of Hank Pym and Stephen Strange, doing things Bucky takes care not to ask about.

But the Steve Rogers that pops into existence on Bucky’s patio is not the right Steve Rogers.

He’s dressed all in black, for one thing.

He’s got a metal arm, for another.

-

A _right_ metal arm.

“It’s like we’re mirrors,” alt-Steve says, peering curiously at Bucky’s Wakandan-made left arm. Alt-Steve’s arm is also clearly vibranium, not the titanium-adamantium model the Russians put on the Winter Soldier(s). But the design is different; the black’s a deeper, more matte shade than Bucky’s, and the veins threading through it are silver, not gold.

“I have a feeling we are,” Bucky says, redialing his Steve – and it’s embarrassing, how thinking of this world’s Steve as _his_ makes something warm bubble up in his chest, even though he knows full damn well it doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean – without looking away from alt-Steve.

Alt-Steve isn’t looking away from Bucky either. Quite the opposite. He’s staring intently, with a look in his eyes that makes Bucky want to squirm. It’s not hostile, far from it, just very intense. But Bucky’s helpless to look away, meeting jewel-blue eyes like a man bewitched.

In his ear, the phone rings and rings, but there’s no answer.

“You’re taking this very calmly,” Bucky says carefully, putting the phone down. He’s left six missed calls and an all-caps message, but there’s been no response so either Steve’s working or–

Bucky doesn’t think about the _or_. Steve will get back to him when he checks his phone. He always does.

Alt-Steve shrugs and finally blinks. Bucky lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“I’ve been in this situation before. Well, not quite,” he amends. “But close enough.”

“Oh?”

Alt-Steve nods noncommittally. There’s something very sharp about him – his eyes, the way he holds himself, the quiet consideration put into every word and gesture. It’s starkly different from the Steve in this world – oh, fuck it, no one’s judging his thoughts except his damn own self and Bucky can handle his own bullshit.

It’s different from _Bucky’s_ Steve who walks and breathes like a soldier, not a predator. It’s different from Bucky himself too, though he can’t yet pinpoint exactly how.

“You’re being very calm yourself,” alt-Steve says after a pause, and it’s not a question, but it’s still expectant.

Bucky lets out another slow breath.

“I usually am,” is all he says.

Alt-Steve blinks again, and Bucky gets the feeling that he’s passed some sort of test.

“This happened in my world,” alt-Steve says, leaning back into his armchair with the same forced casualness with which he strode across the patio and dropped into a chair while Bucky stood there open-mouthed and stunned. “We freaked out a lot in the beginning. Me and Bucky, I mean. My Bucky.”

Oh, Bucky envies it, the ease with which he says _My Bucky_ , voice fond and a little possessive, the way Bucky gets when he thinks of Steve in his head.

“Another Steve showed up?” Bucky asks. And then, because he can’t help it, “If you were the Winter Soldier, then your Bucky – he’s, is he…?”

“I fell from the train,” alt-Steve says simply, no emotion evident in the words. “Bucky crashed the Valkyrie. When he woke up, they gave him the shield and told him to be the new Captain America.”

Bucky shudders, and he can’t help the reaction but doesn’t want to either. Alt-Steve gives him a knowing look.

“Bucky had that same expression when he told me the story. He didn’t agree until the aliens came, and then, it wasn’t much of a choice. And to answer your other question, no, it wasn’t another Steve that showed up in our world. It was you.”

“Me? As in, specifically me?”

“No.” Alt-Steve’s got a killer smile. His face is a little sharper than Bucky’s Steve. His eyes are more sunken, cheeks hollower. It does obscene things to his cheekbones, which gleam like they can cut a man when he smiles. “He was from the 40s. It was after Kreischberg though, so he wasn’t shocked that I looked the way I did or that me and Buck were both kicking around in 2030. Well, maybe a bit shocked about that last bit and the stories that went with it. I have a feeling neither of us fell from the train in his world, once he went back.”

There’s so much information to digest in all that. Bucky just sits there staring like a dumbass for a while, brain working a mile a minute.

“2030?” he asks in the end because that seems the easiest to tackle. “He went back?”

“It was 2030 then,” alt-Steve says with a nod. His flesh hand twitches like he wants to reach out. “Been a couple of years now. He stuck around for – two, almost three weeks. It was nice, once the shock wore off. He vanished one morning, right in front of our eyes. Strange warned us it might happen, so it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it – well. Hell of a thing to see. Strange confirmed he went back to his original timeline, in the exact moment he disappeared from. So there’s that.”

“Huh.” It’s a woefully inadequate reaction to everything Bucky just heard, but what do you say to something like this? “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” alt-Steve agrees, but he’s smiling faintly. “What year is this then?”

“2025.”

Alt-Steve’s eyes widen, the first hint of genuine surprise he’s displayed in the hour or so since his appearance.

“That’s – damn, it’s been just two years since they reversed the snap? It happened here, right? Thanos–”

“Yes,” Bucky cuts him off. Then he grimaces. “Sorry, it’s just–”

Alt-Steve does reach out this time. Bucky holds very still as his flesh hand settles on Bucky’s knee and grips tight, a solid pressure.

“Too soon,” alt-Steve says quietly. “I know.”

“Did you–” Bucky stops, swallows. It feels terribly rude to say this to a man who’s still half a stranger, yet– “Steve wasn’t dusted. Here.”

_I was_ , he doesn’t add.

“Neither was I,” comes the response. “Bucky was.”

He says it like he knows it was the same here. Maybe Bucky’s that obvious. Sam told him, a few months back, that there’s a look about them, the people who came back.

He also said there’s a look to the ones who weren’t gone in the first place, or what’s left of them.

Bucky can see it in Steve. The pain and the pieces torn out. He misses the days when the worst he had to save Steve from was back-alley brawls with men twice his size. These days, he can’t save Steve from anything; his demons aren’t flesh-and-blood anymore. Maybe they never were, and Bucky was only ever kidding himself.

Alt-Steve frowns, looking intently into Bucky’s eyes again, almost like he’s trying to bore into his mind. It’s unsettling, and Bucky doesn’t miss how alt-Steve is leaning in now, his hulking torso eating up the scant space between their chairs. Bucky’s tense as he waits for – for something, skin tingling under alt-Steve’s hand on his knee even through a soft layer of fabric.

“Can I–” alt-Steve starts, but they’re interrupted by the familiar roar of a motorcycle.

Bucky’s on his feet and rushing inside the house within seconds, alt-Steve hot on his heels.

He reaches the front door just as the bike’s rumbling ceases. He holds out a hand for alt-Steve to stay out of sight before throwing the door open, keeping his body filling the doorway. He’s pretty fucking sure Steve won’t react well to seeing his own doppelganger, especially not with Bucky. For all that thing are sometimes a bit stilted between them as they find their footing with these new, changed versions of each other, the protective streak Steve developed post-serum as if to compensate for all those years Bucky spent fishing him out of dumpsters has a tendency to rear its violent head at even a paper scratch.

Bucky curses when he sees two figures dismounting. This is the worst time for guests. Both are wearing helmets, which is rare because Steve thinks road safety is for other people, and the man behind is of a similar build to Steve, another, jaw-dropping rarity with Thor off-planet.

Steve whips off his helmet and shoots Bucky a pained smile and an awkward wave.

“Um, so, Bucky, something happened–”

Bucky has all of a second to note that the likeness of the two riders is _eerily_ similar before Steve’s passenger also takes off his helmet.

“Hey, Buck,” says Steve Rogers #3.

“Well, fuck,” says alt-Steve, peering out from under Bucky’s arm.

-

“I need names,” Bucky announces into the loaded silence.

The three Steves – _three_ Steves, Jesus fucking Christ, Bucky’s hair’s gonna be white before the day’s out – stop their strange staring/dick-measuring contest to pin Bucky with the considerable force of their combined focus.

“Buck?”

It’s Bucky’s Steve speaking, easily identifiable despite their current surplus of Steves. Alt-Steve’s got his metal arm. Steve #3 has a mighty beard that could give Steve’s in his Nomad days a run for its money. It looks very soft. Bucky is determinedly Not Thinking about it the way he Did Not Think About It when it was his Steve who walked into his Wakandan hut with half his face buried under ginger fuzz.

“Names,” Bucky says, yanking his brain out of the gutter’s edges. “I can’t just keep calling you Steve this and Steve that in my head. Gimme names.”

“Grant,” alt-Steve says almost immediately. He shrugs when three sets of eyes turn on him. “It’s what I went with for, well, a while. After the–” He waves his right hand about his head in a way Bucky feels deep in his fucking soul but makes the other two Steves stare at the metal limb with a careful non-expression that’s an expression all on its own. “–all that. Didn’t feel like Steve yet, but Grant was doable. I still use it a lot, so yeah.”

There’s a beat of silence after that.

“Grant sounds better than alt-Steve,” Bucky says, smiling at the poor guy. He smiles back in that knowing way, and it makes Bucky feel oddly warm inside to feel like he’s sharing a secret with him.

Steve #3 speaks then.

“It’s only fair that the native Steve be Steve. I could be Steven? I’d say Rogers, but then I might jump each time like I’m rightfully terrified that my husband’s gearing up to rip me a new asshole, so let’s not.”

The silence this time is noticeably more weighted.

“Husband?” Bucky’s Steve asks very delicately.

“Sure.” Steven raises his left hand, showing off the glinting golden ring on his finger. “Bucky made me ask like five hundred times, but you know what, it was worth it.”

The implications of that take a moment to sink in.

And then Bucky’s face is _burning_.

He makes startled, helpless eye contact with Steve whose cheeks are a violent tomato-red. They look away quickly.

“I bet,” Grant says, sounding a little wistful. “I haven’t scrounged up the guts to ask yet, though Buck and I’ve been practically married for a decade now. Don’t know if I can handle five hundred rejections though.”

“I may have been exaggerating a little,” Steven says, voice and eyes considerably warmer than before as he looks at Grant, as if being with Bucky, wanting to be married to Bucky, is his personal yardstick for his alternate selves. “And you know, pal, I don’t think you’ll run into the same issues I did.”

That part is said with a quick glance to Grant’s metal arm that none of them misses. Grant just grins, crooked and unspeakably cute.

“Guess I won’t.”

Two pairs of expectant blue eyes turn on Bucky and Steve, who inch a little closer together but categorically refuses to make eye contact.

Steve, ever the brave one, speaks first.

“We’re, uh, we’re not like that.”

Steven and Grant blink with eerie synchronicity.

“We’re best friends,” Bucky adds because he’s got Steve’s six no matter what, even in situations that make him want to turn tail and run.

Another awkward moment passes before the others respond.

“Sure,” Steven says, smiling in that fake, sugary way Steve does when people push babies into his oversized paws.

“Sounds legit,” Grant adds, the words so devoid of inflection that Bucky cringes on his behalf.

The silence afterward lasts a long time and is very, very weird.

“So,” Bucky says in what he thinks is a normal volume but seems to echo tinnily around the room, “lunch, anyone?”

-

Lunch is take-out that will take over half an hour to be delivered, the order huge enough to torment the poor fucker doomed to haul it to their doorstep. The two of them take care to tip generously, and Bucky’s pretty sure that’s half their monthly expenditure because two supersoldiers who can’t cook to save their lives rack up one hell of a delivery bill.

Grant and Steven have made themselves scarce, making noises about showers and maybe clothes to Bucky while Steve was rattling off a solid two minutes’ worth of an order. Apparently, being plucked out of your world and deposited in another leaves you feeling all slick and grimy. Bucky sends Grant to his own bedroom and Steven to Steve’s, so now it’s just the two of them lounging awkwardly in the couch, hyperaware of the scant space between them.

Well, Bucky’s always hyperaware of how close Steve is, whether they’re on opposite sides of a room or sprawled across each other all no-homo, but now, it’s extremely evident that Steve’s also in the same boat. A part of Bucky enjoys watching him squirm, but he’s mostly just shit-scared that this will ruin the nice, cozy life they’re building for themselves. Sure, Bucky would love to kiss Steve and then ride him into the sunset, but he can live without that. He has so far. He’s not so sure he’ll survive losing Steve’s friendship.

He sneaks a glance at Steve and, not for the first time, ends up looking him right in the eye.

Unlike the last few times, neither of them looks away.

“How long–”

“When did–”

They both shut up at the same time. Bucky turns his body to face Steve properly and nods at him to go on.

“You first,” Steve says.

“Steve.”

“Bucky.”

“ _Steve_.”

“ _Bucky_.”

Christ, why did he ever even try to out-stubborn Steve motherfucking Rogers. And why, for fuck’s sake, can’t Bucky stop smiling?

“When did Steven show up?” he asks, finishing his question dutifully. He folds his arms across his chest and raises an eyebrow as if to say ‘There!’

“Maybe an hour before we got here. I was at the compound, helping Wanda with her training. And he was there, just like that. We thought for a second that she did it, but we were working on her hand-to-hand, no magic involved. Oddly, he was the one who was all calm about it.”

“It’s happened to him before?” Bucky asks, thinking back to Grant and his similarly cool acceptance.

Steve nods, expression thoughtful.

“Yeah. Mentioned Strange and how the destabilized timelines do this shit.”

“That never fails to be ominous as all fuck.”

“It’s not so bad.” Steve smiles, half-reassuring and full-amused. “The multiverse won’t fold in on itself. There will just be these…slips. In reality. Manageable.”

Bucky snorts at that, Steve grins, and like this, the awkwardness is all but dead.

“Honestly, Strange told me this might happen, but it’s still a hell of a thing to see your own face on someone who’s _you_ but not, y’know.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees unthinkingly, mind wandering to silent videos in a museum and the young, pouting face of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Steve’s smile dims a bit but he rallies admirably. Bucky reaches out to squeeze his hand and distracts them both by saying, “I wasn’t prepared to see you – him – as the Winter Soldier.”

Steve swallows, eyes dropping to Bucky’s left arm. It doesn’t bother him, that much has been made abundantly clear many times over. But Bucky can tell Steve’s picturing the scars at the shoulder and thinking of the files; the ones that describe, in loving detail, how they dug out what was left of his shoulder and molded metal into it while Bucky screamed and screamed and died on the operating table for about three seconds.

“Steve,” Bucky calls softly. “Don’t.”

“I feel like an asshole,” Steve says, voice pitched low enough that even Bucky has to strain to hear. “Because all I can think about is the Bucky in that world. I’m – I’m glad he was spared.”

Bucky shudders. The look on Steve’s face turns from shame to misery, but Bucky knows without having to ask that no amount of guilt will make him take back what he just said.

“I’m not,” Bucky returns, just as quietly. “I don’t want him to suffer. But I would always choose to save you, Steve.”

“I know,” Steve says, grimacing, sad. “Then you can understand why I’d choose the opposite.”

God, this man.

“What does Steven do?” Bucky asks, just to change the subject. It still feels like they’re a couple of gossiping househusbands, but at least the two supersoldiers occupied with their running showers won’t hear.

“We didn’t talk a lot, but his world is similar to ours. A bit more into the future. Year’s 2036. He’s back on active duty, a commander now, but his Bucky’s retired. From fighting, at least. They’re settled in Wakanda, and Bucky works for Shuri now, it seems.”

“Dream job,” Bucky says, thinking of his own workload, which is mostly throwing baby Avengers around the compound and a shitton of paperwork and analytics. He tried the whole ‘Captain America’s sidekick’ thing again for a few months after Sam got the shield, but it didn’t last. He’s so tired of fighting.

And Steve – Steve saw right through him too.

“Buck,” he says now, giving every indication of giving a gentle, well-intentioned spiel Bucky has all but memorized now. All about choosing what makes him happy, even if that involves leaving Steve behind, and Bucky’s not sure how to make it sink in that he’s been there, done that, and ain’t doing it again. It might have taken Thanos and five years of curious non-existence for Bucky to take a good look at his priorities and screw them on straight, but he’s got them now and he’s sticking to them.

“Shut up, Rogers,” Bucky says, sighing. The familiar phrase brings to mind Steven’s words, and to his horror, he blushes again. Steve’s thinking the same, he can tell, and just like that, they can’t meet each other’s eyes.

“Tell me about Grant,” Steve blurts out with all the grace of a man desperately looking for a way out.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs, knocking his shoulder into Steve’s before inching away to the other edge of the couch. “Might as well get the gossip out of the way before those two stop hiding in the bathrooms.”

-

The first day’s the most awkward. The Steves can’t quite seem to be at ease around each other. They don’t have the same problem with Bucky, and Grant in particular seems to gravitate towards him like a sunflower towards the rising sun. That doesn’t escape the other two’s notice, and they seem torn between passive acceptance and a strange kind of possessiveness. Bucky’s Steve, in particular, is a hell of a lot more handsy than usual, always hovering with a hand on Bucky’s back or a casual arm over his shoulders, marking territory like he’s not even aware of doing it. Bucky drinks it in like a slightly dazed sponge.

It’s a hell of a position to be in though, and by the time he goes to bed, Bucky feels like he’s walking on clouds.

Next morning, Steve reluctantly fucks off to meet Strange. Before he mounts his Harley, he pulls Bucky into a bear hug that almost lifts him off his feet.

He stumbles back into the house with probably very visible hearts in his eyes. Grant and Steven, hanging around the kitchen trying – and failing – to be unobtrusive – give him knowing looks.

Bucky just sighs like a lovelorn puppy.

-

Strange doesn’t say anything more than what Grant and Steven have already told them. There are rifts in reality. They’re not dangerous. The universe will punt Steve’s alternate selves to their own worlds in its own sweet time.

Meanwhile, Steve, who’s retired from active duty but not from meddling in world disasters, can’t exactly take an indefinite break from raising a semi-fresh batch of Avengers and putting his tactical skills to good use by remotely coordinating missions alongside Hill. That leaves Bucky on supersoldier-babysitter duty most days and some nights too, when Steve’s out of the country. He always calls, no matter how dire the situation, but Bucky still misses him terribly those times.

It’s easier with Grant and Steven around.

They can’t go out much. New York, and Brooklyn especially, might be very good about leaving its superheroes the hell alone, but even retired, Steve Rogers is, well, _Steve Rogers_. A couple of them walking around together will attract some attention, likely of the major-news-outlet headline and ensuing government sanction kind. Steven can maybe get away with it because beards and Steve just does not compute for most people, but Grant, with his pretty face and metal arm, doesn’t have that luxury.

“I wear one those face masks back in my world,” Grant says a couple of days into his impromptu visit. He’s lounging shirtless on the couch, and Bucky has spent the past hour trying not very hard to stare because he’s in love and mentally married, not _dead_.

It doesn’t help that Grant is, well, Steve. A Steven Grant Rogers by any other name looks just as fuckable, and boy, has Bucky’s brain been getting some mixed signals these days.

And honestly, he’s also fascinated how different Grant’s body is from his own. He knows that Steve’s healing factor is more rapid and thorough than his own, but it’s one thing to know that and another to see the more seamless joining of flesh and metal. It’s more horrifying too because Grant still has raised, pale scars all over his right shoulder, and Bucky doesn’t need to imagine the sheer level of trauma it took for them not to fade. He knows, intimately, the desperation of a body fighting so hard to stay alive that anything not life-threatening falls to the wayside.

“–and then Dugan went and kissed Gabe right on the mouth.”

Bucky jolts back to himself with a shocked little noise.

“Eh?”

Grant blinks innocently at him.

“What, you don’t remember that story?”

Bucky frowns.

“I don’t, but you know what, that ain’t saying much. I have brain damage.”

“So do I, pal.”

It’s an objectively terrible thing to laugh about but damn if they don’t.

“I’m fuckin’ with you,” Grant says, grinning sharply. “Knew you weren’t hearing a word I was saying. Something distract you, Buck?”

He’s got that knowing expression again, the one that makes Bucky melt inside. His cheeks are flaming again.

“No,” he says weakly, and Grant’s smile turns downright _predatory_ , but then the front door opens as Steven returns from an evening run, and Bucky happily uses the chance to flee.

-

“You should tell him.”

Bucky sighs and sinks deeper into his patio chair. Steven does not take the hint and casually drops into the chair beside Bucky’s, so similar to what Grant did the first time they met that Bucky’s startled into a smile.

“He’s straight, Steven.”

There’s a very loud silence following that statement.

“Buck,” Steven says very gently. “I’m pretty sure I’m as straight as a fuckin’ circle.”

Bucky puts his tablet away, giving his afternoon reading as a lost cause. To be fair, he wasn’t concentrating anyway, too busy mentally doodling hearts around James Rogers and debating the merits of Rogers-Barnes vs Barnes-Rogers.

He turns to face Steven. He’s a bit of an enigma even now, similar enough to the Steve of this world to almost pass as identical but different somehow, in a way Bucky can’t quite articulate. He’s the oldest of them, and the quietest. But he’s got keen eyes that seem to look into your fucking soul.

“Maybe my Steve is,” Bucky says quietly. “How would you know?”

It’s a novelty to think of Steve being straight as a possibility rather than a given. He’s got two new Steves in his house, both in long-term relationships with their Buckys, one pair fucking married. It’s hard not to hope after that, which is a mixed blessing because Bucky’s been resigned since the 30s to being in flaming queer love with his best friend but never quite managed to shake off the ache of it despite literal decades of telling himself that Steve’s not for him, not that way. And he _is_ happy like this, living with Steve, relearning old habits, and establishing new ones. Hope – real, tangible hope – is a tricky thing to add into that mixture.

Steven just rolls his eyes. But then he takes a good look at Bucky’s expression and his expression turns sympathetic. He snakes an arm around Bucky’s shoulder, the angle a little awkward with them in two chairs, but the contact is nice, Steven’s warmth reassuring.

“Even if he is straight,” Steven says, in a tone that makes it clear how unlikely he considers that to be, “I’m sure he’d make an exception for you. I mean, look at you, sweetheart, I’d eat you up if I were him.”

Bucky makes an undignified noise as his cheeks heat up again. He wasn’t a blusher back before the war, and the Soldier wasn’t allowed emotions, but ever since his fried brain started healing itself, he’s been a blusher and a crier and giggler and everything in between. He knows his Steve likes it, gets a hell of a kick out of making Bucky break down in helpless laughter, but Grant and Steven are clearly taking a very different route.

“Fuck you,” Bucky says once he finds his voice, shrugging like he’s going to throw off Steven’s arm, but Steven tightens his hold and leans in a little, blue eyes widened faux-innocently.

“Aw, don’t be sore at me, darlin’,” he says with an accent Bucky can’t even begin to place, and Bucky’s laughing in spite of himself, hiding his face to try and deny Steven the satisfaction.

Steven laughs too, the sound deep and warm. He’s close enough for Bucky to feel his breath on his skin, brushing his ear and the side of his neck, and the heat on Bucky’s cheeks gets worse as his heartbeat kicks up a notch.

-

Bucky stares at his reflection in impotent fury. The reflection stares back equally balefully.

It’s not the mirror’s fucking fault though, is it? Bucky’s the one who decided not to wear the arm today, and Bucky’s the one currently holding a snapped hair-tie in his clenched fist because he got frustrated trying to put up his hair with one arm and failed fucking epically.

He squeezes his eyes shut and hangs his head, trying to take deep breaths like Bruce told him to. What really gets to him is that this is something he can do. He spent fucking months living with one arm in Wakanda and liked it. Loved it, loved not being a weapon. The arm Shuri gave him is different than the first – a weapon, yes, but also more, meant for gentleness as much as violence. But he doesn’t always wear it, just doesn’t want to some days, and it doesn’t hinder him except when he goes out and sees fuckers staring, but Bucky avoids humanity more often than not so that’s not much of an issue.

But every fucking thing has been going wrong today. Steve hasn’t been home for two days, and Bucky slept like shit last night, and he woke up to an empty house because Steve finally got Grant his synthetic mask so he can run with Steven now, and breakfast tasted like ash in his mouth, and he couldn’t fucking shit right, god–

“Hey.”

Bucky jumps a goddamn foot in the air and whirls around, only to find Grant there with his arms raised in the universal gesture for calming panicked motherfuckers.

“Why are you here?” Bucky snaps before he can think, and then he does think. “Fuck. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Grant’s here because their apartment doesn’t have any other bathrooms than the en suites, so they’re stuck creeping into Bucky or Steve’s bedroom on a regular basis. It’s usually Steve’s because Grant and Steven crash in there while Steve sleeps in Bucky’s bed the nights he’s home, but–

“Steven’s using the other,” Grant says softly. “Sorry, Buck. I thought you heard me coming.”

Bucky turns away because he can’t stand to look at Grant and that terribly understanding expression, but the mirror’s no kinder, blinding him with both his own grimacing mouth and Grant, again. Bucky closes his eyes again, gripping the counter hard like the cold granite will help composure seep into him.

He's not every surprised when a hand clasps his right shoulder.

Grant’s hand – flesh, not metal – runs gently down Bucky’s bare arm and gently coaxes his fingers to relinquish the broken hair-tie. Bucky slits his eyes open and watches Grant set in on the countertop beside the packet of ties. He takes another, a lurid orange that couldn’t be a further contrast to the deep green Bucky snapped.

“May I?” Grant asks, and that’s predictable too.

“I can do it myself,” Bucky says tiredly, as exhausted now as he was angry before.

Grant huffs a humorless laugh.

“I know you can, pal. I’m offering though.”

“Grant–”

“It’s not selfless,” Grant adds quietly. “I do this for my Buck all the time. I miss it.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky says though he doesn’t really mean it. He meets Grant’s eyes in the mirror but can’t hold them long. The rest of him isn’t any easier to handle because Grant’s in one of Steve’s criminally tight t-shirts, which is even worse on him than on Steve. Grant’s bulkier than Steve, Steven, and Bucky, like where Hydra wanted Bucky to be the knife that slid soundlessly between ribs, they wanted Grant to be the sledgehammer, a thing of sheer brute force.

“Nah, really. He’s got long hair too, real pretty. Can’t keep my hands off it, and really, he doesn’t want me to.”

It’s the wistful longing in Grant’s voice that convinces Bucky. He’s been here for almost a week now, and Strange doesn’t know when he and Steven will go back to their timelines, only that they eventually will.

“Alright,” Bucky says, flicking his eyes to Grant’s just long enough to show that he means it. Grant smiles, and it lights up the whole room.

Bucky just stands there as Grant slides the tie on his wrist and picks up the comb Bucky abandoned. He’s gentle as he combs out Bucky’s hair, a task made easy enough by Bucky sorting out the tangles earlier. Still, there’s something tender in it. Maybe it’s Grant’s expression, the soft look in his eyes and the faint curl of his mouth.

He sets the comb aside all too soon, and Bucky feels an odd sense of loss. Steve has never–

“Can I braid it?” Grant asks.

“Oh. Yes.”

But Grant doesn’t start braiding, not immediately. Instead, he gently makes Bucky lower his head and then sinks those long fingers into his scalp. They do – _something_ , and Bucky lets out a shocked moan that’s utterly obscene.

“Yeah?” Grant asks, grin audible in his voice.

“Oh my god.”

Grant hums, pleased, and then his fingers are moving again, massaging Bucky’s scalp with slow, firm motions, pulling sounds out of him that would give any eavesdropper a hell of a picture. Bucky’s half-convinced this is better than sex. His spine feels like it’s melting, and he’s only kept upright because he’s pinned between the countertop and Grant’s bulky body.

He whines – fucking whines – when Grant’s fingers slow and then stop.

“Aw,” Grant says, smug dressed up as sympathy. “Always thought you were half-puppy, seems true across every universe.”

Bucky’s still too blissed out to even bitch at him. Grant earns himself back some brownie points by combing Bucky’s hair again, sorting out the mess he made with his hands. Bucky sighs and sinks into the sensation, letting out a little approving noise when Grant’s fingers return to his hair, this time to braid it.

Bucky doesn’t watch him work, but Grant seems to know what he’s doing. His fingers are swift and sure as they arrange Bucky’s hair this way and that, not pulling too tight even once. When it’s over, Bucky sighs a little sadly before opening his eyes.

“Damn.” He whistles, impressed. “It’s good.”

“Not my best work,” Grant demurs, but his eyes are pleased. He gives a little tug at the end of the braid, then lays it out over Bucky’s left shoulder. Before Bucky can tense, Grant speaks. “My Bucky’s hair is halfway down his back now. Y’know, he started growing it out after a bet with Sam, but then he never stopped. He gripes that he’s keeping it long for my sake, but he fucking loves it.”

Bucky laughs, trying to imagine his own hair that long. It would be a hell of a lot of work, but it’s not like he’s not already using a shitton of hair products to keep his mane tame.

“Hydra was saving on hair stylists, with me,” Bucky says, voice deliberately light. Grant goes very still behind him. “I thought of hacking it all off a thousand times, but you know what, fuck them. It’s damn good hair.”

“It is,” Grant agrees quietly. “They shaved mine. Every time, after cryo. Monsters gotta look the part.”

Bucky imagines it. Grant – _Steve_ – with his bulging muscles and black mask and bald head. Blood on his hands. A dream turned into a nightmare. He looks at him now, with his golden tuft of hair and clear blue eyes and a tiger’s stalking gait.

He doesn’t have words to offer, not the way Sam would, so he leans back into Grant, offering commiseration with the warmth of his body. Grant slides both arms around his waist, holding loosely. It’s comfortable. Steve’s the only who Bucky usually wants touching him, but Grant and Steven are natural exceptions to that.

“Thank you,” Bucky says after a while.

Grant holds him closer, hugging tight.

“You’re welcome,” he says warmly. “It’s one of the things that help. When my Buck’s in a bad place. Hoped it would help you too.”

Bucky smiles. It’s a little bittersweet to hear Grant and Steven talk about their partners while Steve and Bucky are, well, what they are. But it’s more sweet than bitter, and Bucky’s genuinely happy for all his alternate selves out there who’s got their dream man in their beds.

“What else helps?” he asks because he’s curious and it never hurts, a little more fuel for his daydreams.

Grant makes a considering noise and pulls back, arms sliding off Bucky. But his metal hand pauses at Bucky’s hip and grips a little. Bucky’s shirtless and wearing loose sweatpants he stole from Steve. They hang dangerously low on his hips, and Grant’s thumb slots along the jut of a hipbone.

“Lots of things,” Grant says, voice low and deep. “This works.”

His right hand slides down, slipping inside Bucky’s pants to give his ass a firm squeeze. Cold metal bites into the flesh, branding Bucky deep.

Bucky gasps, watching red suffuse his cheeks. Grant meets his eyes, almost challenging, their earlier softness replaced with something dark and heated. He slowly pulls his hand out of Bucky’s pants and backs away, holding his gaze until he vanishes from sight.

Bucky stands there for a long time, pressed against the counter to hide the bulge in his pants from even himself.

-

Steven accosts him later that night.

Well, accost is a strong word for the polite knock on the office door that’s so starkly different from Steve’s tendency to just barge in. To be fair, it’s Steve office too and anyway, Steve’s not here yet so it’s either Steven or Grant, and the latter has made himself scare since The Bathroom Incident, capitals well-deserved.

“Come in,” Bucky calls, lowkey glad for an excuse to push his laptop aside.

Steven steps inside with a sheepish smile and closes the door behind himself.

“Hey, Buck. Am I bothering you?”

“Think you’re saving me,” Bucky says sincerely. “What do you need?”

“Nothing,” Steven says unconvincingly. “I – company, maybe. I’m going a little stir-crazy with nothing to do.”

“You know you could always go with Steve. Help him train the Avengers or something.”

“Better not. This world seems pretty similar to mine. I might know things I shouldn’t. Fucking with the timeline is what got us all into this mess so better not do it too much.”

“Fair enough.”

“What are you up to?” He comes to stand beside Bucky’s chair, but he’s looking at Bucky not the screen. Bucky angles the laptop so Steven can have an eyeful of the endless page of text. “Ooh, paperwork. Fun.”

Steven’s voice is so painfully dry that Bucky cracks up a bit.

“Fuckin’ tell me about it. This shit makes me want to go back to active duty sometimes.”

“I know,” Steven says in the despairing tone of someone who does indeed know. “Back home, laptops and the like are mostly obsolete, but no matter how advanced everything gets, the number of docs you gotta read and sign multiplies like bunnies. Deskwork is harder on my back than punching Nazis ever was.”

“Punching Nazis is infinitely more satisfying, that’s why,” Bucky says, stretching when his back twinges as if every ache and pain has been called to life by Steven’s words. “Ouch.”

“Hurts?” Steven asks, suddenly all concern. “My Buck gets backaches easily because of the arm. The new one’s better, but–”

“–it’s not perfect and there’s still plenty of leftover damage from the old model,” Bucky finishes, smiling up at Steven’s frowning face. “Yeah, I know. Same here.”

Steven’s frown deepens, and then his eyes light up in a familiar way that makes Bucky sit a little straighter, immediately wary.

“I could give you a massage!” Oh, sweet _Jesus_. “Hey, what’s that expression for? I give good massages. Bucky says so all the time. Well, he says that’s the real reason he married me, but he says that about a lot of things so I don’t know. Come on. It’ll be good.”

Oh, Bucky bets it’ll be good. Last time one of these fuckers sweettalked Bucky into something using an alternate Bucky as an excuse, he ended up with his butt groped and a sadly neglected erection.

He opens his mouth to deliver a ‘hell no’ and swallows every syllable at the bright, hopeful look in Steven’s eyes.

“Okay,” Bucky hears himself say.

He lets himself be tugged up from the chair and led to the bedroom and divested of his shirt, all in a trance. It’s when he’s stomach-down on the mattress with Steven straddling the back of his thighs that his brain comes back online with a high-pitched shriek.

He tenses up, hyperaware of Steve’s hands resting on his mismatched shoulders, warm with body heat and slick with some oil. Bucky doesn’t even know when, where, or how he got the goddamn oil.

“Relax,” Steven croons, digging gently into Bucky’s unscarred shoulder. Fuck, but it feels good. “Let me take care of you.”

That’s all the warning Bucky gets before Steven throws himself into it. It takes all of a second for Bucky to register that the man does know what he’s doing, and then his thoughts are drowning in a wave of pained pleasure.

Steven goes at the knots tightening up Bucky’s back like they personally insulted his mother, god rest Sarah’s soul. He’s careful with the scars near the metal but doesn’t skirt around them, working them over in a way that suggest he knows exactly what to do and has done it before. Bucky can feel himself liquifying with each minute that passes, and he’s aware that he’s moaning and groaning and generally making a ruckus. He just can’t bring himself to stop or even care.

By the time Steven’s done, Bucky’s a panting puddle on the bed.

“Want me to do your legs too?” Steven asks, all cheerful and chirpy, and Bucky makes a noise that can probably be construed as assent.

Steven manhandles Bucky and takes off his pant an ease that makes Bucky’s brain helpless not to think of why he’s so practiced at it. Somehow, he doesn’t think it’s from just massages. That rabbit hole leads to a situation in his boxers that makes Bucky glad he’s lying on his belly.

Then Steven digs a thumb into the arch of Bucky’s foot, and he loses his mind a little. Again.

His dick loses its mind too. Bucky’s unspeakably grateful that he’s too boneless to really move because he’d be rutting into the mattress otherwise. He’s already groaning like he’s getting stuffed, face warm at how he’s damn near naked while being touched so intimately by hands he’s imagined on himself a million times over.

But fuck, it’s one thing to pant after his Steve, another to be eyeing one who’s a married man.

Not that that stopped Grant. Not that that’s stopping Steven from putting his hands all over Bucky.

Bucky’s churning with guilt and arousal when Steven huffs in a quiet, satisfied kind of way. He strokes aimlessly down Bucky’s legs a few times. The light pat to his ass is more of a ‘we’re done’ gesture than Grant’s purposeful grope – or so Bucky thinks. Just to be safe, he keeps his face buried in a pillow and turned away from Steven as he perches on the bed beside Bucky.

He places one boulder-sized hand on Bucky’s nape and squeezes. It’s fire down his spine, but Bucky’s too breathless to moan. There would be little doubt, if he does, about the kind of reaction he’s having.

“Feeling better?” Steven asks kindly. Bucky’s sure he’s imagining the suggestive tint to the words. Wishful thinking. It better be.

“Lots,” Bucky croaks out. “You have good hands.”

He hears what he just said and has a moment to mentally cuss himself out before Steven speaks.

“You sound like my husband,” he says as Bucky tries to become one with the sheets. “He likes my hands too.”

It’s innocent, he’s talking about massages, Bucky’s just making a mountain out of a mole hill because he’s that thirsty for supersoldier dick, goddammit.

“Lucky guy,” he manages, keeping his hips still with sheer willpower. His cock’s so hard it hurts.

“Nah, that’s me,” Steven says, nonchalantly stroking his obscenely skilled hand up and down Bucky’s spine. Bucky is _dying_. “You know, if you want, I’ll teach Steve to do this before I’m gone. I’m sure he’ll be happy to help you out. We’ll work you over a bit, together.”

“ _Steven_ ,” Bucky gasps, half-scandalized and mostly just fucking gone over that mental image. Two sets of hands, Steve’s and Steven’s both, and in Bucky’s gutter of a mind, massaging ain’t what they’re doing. He squirms helplessly, and his cock rubs against the mattress, and it’s so hard not to grind down or stick a hand down or even fucking beg Steven to make good on what he’s carefully not saying.

“Alright, alright,” Steven says, laughing, and is it Bucky’s imagination or does his voice sound deeper? “I’ll leave you to the afterglow. Take care, Buck.”

Oh, Bucky takes care alright.

The moment the door clicks shut behind Steven, Bucky snakes a hand between his body and the bed, hips rutting frantically to the filthy montage swirling through his mind.

-

Steve comes back the next morning, looking tired and ready for roughly thirty hours of sleep. He pulls Bucky into his customary greeting hug, and Bucky feels something inside him settle.

But once Steve has caught up on rest and is out around the house, Bucky’s feelings turn more conflicted.

On one hand, it’s good to have him around as a buffer because after The Bathroom Incident and The Massage Conversation, Bucky can’t look at Grant or Steven without wanting to jump them. It doesn’t help that the two of them look back like they highly encourage Bucky to jump on them.

On the other, Bucky’s been wanting to jump _Steve_ since puberty hit and he figured out what dicks were for, so he’s the wrong kind of distraction. And Steve while doesn’t look at Bucky like he wants to fuck him, there’s so much affection in those guileless blue eyes whenever they’re on Bucky, sometimes accompanied by that expression of soft surprise he sported almost constantly for a year after Bucky came back from being dusted. That’s another kind of hell entirely.

It says something about Bucky that there’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be.

Steve also brings gifts – flesh sleeves for Grant and Bucky. Bucky doesn’t use them much because he goes through them too fast for it to be worth the trouble. But Grant can use one of those with the synth-mask to go out and interact with the world in a deeper way than just morning runs. They know Steven’s already friendly with half the local baristas and never pass up an opportunity to joke about his uncanny resemblance to the former Captain America.

Naturally, this also comes back to bite Bucky in the ass sooner than later.

Steve takes off to meet Pym and Strange a couple of days after, promising to return in time for dinner. Bucky sequesters himself in the office before he does something he’ll regret, but he can’t say he’s all that surprised when Steven and Grant follow him there.

“So, we were thinking–” Grant begins, bright smile faltering at Bucky’s scowl.

“–that we should go out,” Steven says, smoothly taking over. Fucker doesn’t even flinch when Bucky glares at him. “Come on, Buck. Grant can go out now, and I’ve found this nice Italian place a few blocks over. Let’s celebrate.”

Grant nods along, smiling winningly at Bucky.

Bucky can feel himself being talked into it even as he tries to hold on to his glare.

“I know what you’re doing,” he says because he’s not a goddamn idiot.

He knows he’s made a mistake when Grant and Steven give him matching smirks.

“Good,” Grant says, his sweet expression from earlier sliding off as his usual sharpness settles back in place. It makes Bucky shiver. “It’s a date then.”

“Guys–”

“Dress casual,” Steven says, pecking Bucky’s cheek, and the casual affection stuns him long enough for the two to slip slyly out of the room.

Bucky slumps in his chair and mentally reviews his options. He could ignore it. He’s pretty sure they won’t push if he just says no.

Trouble is that he doesn’t want to, and those two assholes know it, likely because they’ve each got their respective Buckys hopelessly in love with them and have learned the signs by now.

Bucky strides to his bedroom like a man walking to the gallows, but the butterflies in his stomach only multiply with each step.

He does dress casual, jeans and a nice sweater. Maybe the jeans are tighter than his usual and does very nice things to his posterior. And maybe the sweater is the wine-red color that Steve likes and says brings out Bucky’s ‘pretty eyes,’ which is a thing friends tell each other and has nothing to do with attraction because Steve’s not attracted to him even if his fucking alternate universe versions are.

Jesus.

-

Steven’s dressed and ready to go when Bucky slinks out into the living room. He stops to stare for a moment, torn between being horrified and horny. Steven’s wearing _flannel_. And slacks. He looks like someone tried to dress up as a lumberjack but fell short of the mark.

He's also real fucking hot in that outfit, which is borderline surreal.

“Heya, Buck,” he greets, giving Bucky a blatant once-over. “Lookin’ gorgeous there.”

Bucky huffs like that will magically hide his reddening cheeks and strategically turns away from Steven, looking expectantly towards the bedroom for Grant. As if on cue, Grant steps out and Bucky promptly chokes on spit.

He’s a redhead; the wig a deep auburn that’s obviously dyed, its length long enough to be gathered into a loose ponytail that’s draped along one shoulder. He’s dressed in black the way he seems to prefer, wearing the tight pants and sleeveless shirt he sported when showed up in this world. His right hand looks almost identical to the left, and it’s only personal experience that allows Bucky to spot the unnatural smoothness of the flesh sleeve.

His face though – his face is the strangest.

“I know,” Grant says, nodding at Bucky and Steven. “I look like Nat’s older, less attractive brother.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about less attractive.” It’s Steven who voices what Bucky’s thinking. “But it’s definitely weird. We should take a picture to show Nat.”

“Hell no, I’ve got the one in my world blackmailing me enough as it is. Don’t need the one here too. Where is she anyway?” Grant addresses the question to Bucky, who’s frozen as realization dawns on him, dousing the low, simmering want these two roused. “It’s not like her to just ignore a situation like this. The Nat I know would want to see for herself.”

“We’re keeping it mostly under wraps,” Bucky says, mouth moving mechanically. “And, uh, she – our Natasha, she went to Vormir. With Clint. He’s the one who came back.”

Bucky wasn’t close to her, not really. Unlike Steve, who’s a certified idiot and blind to all sense when it comes to Bucky, Natasha was wary of a man who tried twice to kill her with extreme prejudice. Having some personal experience with the kind of conditioning he went through made her more cautious, not less. He knew her though, talked to her a few times, joked and tried to laugh, whereas Clint was a virtual stranger for all that they fought together that one time.

But it’s really Steve’s grief that thickens Bucky’s words as he informs the others of her fate.

“Fuck.”

It’s a shock to hear Steven swear. Grant drops f-bombs like they’re integral to English grammar, but Steven’s the opposite, more polite than even Steve.

“Fucking fuck,” he says now, hissing the words as he drops unceremoniously on the couch. “That’s not how it – we lost Clint. Nat came back. She was – god, it killed her inside, we saw it, but she’s alive. She’s _living_.”

There’s nothing Bucky can say to that. Thankfully, Grant speaks.

“Same in my world. They sent our Natasha to 2012 New York. Bucky – Bucky was gone. We didn’t have Captain America, and I couldn’t go mess about with fucking aliens and risk Hydra spotting it. So Clint and I went to Vormir, and I mean, I didn’t even fuckin’ know the guy, let alone love him. We came back empty-handed.”

Bucky and Steven lean in at that, grief pushed aside by shock. It’s a significant divergence from their worlds by all accounts.

“It was fine, not that we knew it at the time,” Grant continues, and it’s a little unsettling to hear that familiar voice come out of an unfamiliar face. “We thought we’d failed, and that was… Yeah. But Tony and Nat came back with a few extra vials of Pym Particles. Problem was the sacrifice. We couldn’t just tell someone to go die for that thing, not that there was a lack of volunteers.”

“I bet,” Bucky snaps despite himself. He made the mistake, once, of asking Steve what he’d have done if it were him and Bucky at Vormir. The answer ended up in a yelling match of epic proportions and, later, a shitton of ice cream.

Grant looks at him and shrugs.

“Not me. Wouldn’t have worked. Only person in that world who loved me was dust then.” Fucking fuck; that hits home, but still, _fuck_. Grant starts talking before Bucky or Steven can do more than exchange a vaguely panicked glance. “No one was willing to trade lives. It’s Carol that saved us in the end. Went alone. Turns out that if you threaten to go supernova and burn the soul stone, its guardian, and its habitat all out of existence, cosmic entities will bend the rules a bit.”

There’s a pregnant pause as that sinks in.

“Goddamn,” Bucky whispers, heart beating faster just imagining it. “That’s a hell of a gal.”

“She really is,” Steven says, starry-eyed because of course that’s the kind of ballsy bravado that goes right to his head.

Really though. Goddamn.

“I’m sorry,” Grant says, directed at Bucky. “About your Nat.”

“I didn’t really know her,” he says reflexively. “Steve did. He took it hard. So. Yeah.”

Steven’s expression is one of terrible understanding. Even Grant nods, and Bucky assumes he’s had enough time, in his world, to get to know Natasha better, Winter Soldier or not. The way she and Steve interacted, the way Steve talked about her, it’s hard to imagine the two of them ever not getting along like a house on fire.

Someone’s phone beeps.

Steven starts a little, then pulls out his phone.

“Cab’s here. We should get going.”

-

The ride’s pretty subdued. Bucky’s digesting everything he just learned and all the implications behind it. The other two seem similarly lost in thought. He’d say it’s the least enthusiasm his companions and himself have exhibited when heading for a date, but he’s never had one of those in this century and most of the ones back in Brooklyn were doubles with Steve, which meant said companion was an aggressive wet sock. Bucky remembers being ridiculously endeared while Steve huffed and frowned the whole way to the dance halls and then tried, usually in vain, to muster something more than a grimace for the hapless girl who was his date.

At least Grant and Steven aren’t acting like Bucky’s leading them to the gallows. The three of them squeeze into the backseat, Bucky in the middle, squished between two tanks who’ve both draped their hands over him, possessive in an absent kind of way.

It makes Bucky’s gut go hot and tight, but it says something that his thoughts still end up drifting to the different Natashas and Steves and Buckys.

He wonders if every Bucky Barnes in every Snap got dusted the way he did, if realities exist where no one managed to reverse it, and they just remained gone. He thinks about those Steves out there who lost Bucky a third – fourth? – time, who watched him scatter and never got to see him put back together.

He wonders if there are worlds where it’s the reverse, and it’s Bucky who watched Steve crumple to nothing.

God, he hopes not because he doesn’t want to imagine what would have become of that miserable bastard.

None of them talk much until they’re seated at the restaurant. It’s a nice place – big and neat but not too fancy. Steven rattles off the orders for all three of them, and the waiter’s eyes are bugging out a bit when they retreat.

“Who’s paying for this?” Bucky asks, rather belatedly.

“Steve, technically,” Grant answers. “He set us up with an account when we came, remember? It’s alright, he can afford it.”

“Still kind of sleazy,” Steven says, but he looks pretty smug about that.

“You got something against him now?” Bucky asks, a challenge rising instinctively to his tone. He likes Steven, he likes Grant, but Steve is _Steve_.

Steven’s expression turns surprised for a second. Grant just has that infuriatingly knowing expression back on his too-handsome mug.

“Not exactly,” Steven says carefully. “Just think he can stand to be around more, is all.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Grant’s the one who reaches out, laying one bear-paw of a hand on Bucky’s.

“Easy, Buck. It’s just that we’ve been around for over a week, and Steve was home for maybe three days and what, five nights? You miss him, I can tell. He clearly misses you too. Don’t see why he can’t stay longer.”

Faced with that kind of genuine concern and uncanny insight into Steve and Bucky both, he kind of deflates a little. Thankfully, the food arrives then, and they’re all quiet until the waiter leaves.

“It’s only been like that for this last month,” Bucky says quietly, looking intently at the varied assortment of food rather than at his companions, his _dates_. “A bunch of kids started going around superheroing and calling themselves Young Avengers, and Steve kind of talked them into proper training and the like before they got themselves killed. He likes ‘em, says one might become Cap after Sam retires. Girl’s called America, for fuck’s sake. Anyway, point is that between them and the timeline experiments, he’s being run ragged. It shouldn’t last much longer though. Sam makes a great Cap, and Wanda’s turning out to be a powerhouse like we’ve never seen before. They won’t need him as much soon.”

“You sure?” Steven asks, smiling wryly. “My experience is that Steve Rogers can retire until and only until the world needs saving bad enough.”

“Unfortunately true,” says Grant, surprisingly enough. He grimaces when they look at him. “I tried, alright? But Bucky was done too, and someone needed to be Cap, and he kept making goddamn puppy eyes at me until I gave in and agreed. I’m retired – again – now. Sam and Sharon are sharing the title. But I still get called in. Buck too.”

“Huh.” Bucky tries to imagine the Winter Soldier becoming Captain fucking America. Steve did make some noises about that, but Bucky shut him down hard. But Steve – there’s something right about Steve, no matter his past, taking back the shield. “I can see it.”

Steven just smirks.

“Fuck you both,” Grant says easily.

“Back at ya, pal. And yeah, they might need Steve, and he’ll go batting for them too, but that’s him. Can’t change the guy, wouldn’t try. Point is that the two of you don’t need to act like concerned daddies because he’s not waiting hand and foot on me twenty-four-seven. We’ll back to living in each other’s pockets soon enough, and frankly, I can use a break now and then because Steve’s a hell of a lot less prickly than before the war, but he’s making up for it with his hovering and ‘hey, Buck, let me ice your motherfucking papercut.’ Some distance is good for us both.”

Silence descends again, more stunned than tense.

Grant slowly chews his pasta.

“Concerned daddies, huh,” he says, voice lowering in a way that does things to Bucky. “You into that too, Bucky, because we can sure–”

“What do you mean by before the war?”

Bucky and Grant both turn to Steven who’s frozen in his seat, eyes wide and very blue.

“I – in Brooklyn?” Bucky says uncertainly. “We lived together, remember? For seven years, after Sarah passed.”

Steven flinches as if struck and turns to Grant who looks as puzzled as Bucky feels.

“Yeah, same in my world,” he says. “Most of my first recovered memories were of that time. Steven, you alright?”

“I met Bucky for the first time after he shot Fury,” Steven says, lips barely moving and voice quiet. “I met the Soldier first. Bucky – Bucky came later.”

“Jesus Christ,” Grant says the same time Bucky hisses, “What the fuck?”

“Yeah.” Steven nods, finally unfreezing his limbs. He shakes his head, but the smile that crosses his lips is marveling. “God, I never even – growing up with Bucky, that’s – god.”

It’s downright strange to Steven’s eyes go wide with wonder at something that’s such an integral part of Bucky’s past that everything else – school, his job at the docks, his _parents_ – pales in comparison to memories of a shoebox apartment and Steve’s bony elbow digging into his gut as they slept huddled together for warmth.

“My Bucky grew up in Indiana, not Brooklyn. His family moved away when he was nine,” Steven says, expression a little wistful. “I missed him at Kreischberg. Arrived too late. Zola transferred him. Didn’t even know how many close misses we had until – well, until a little before Thanos. Felt like we kept missing each other by inches. But this – this is something else.”

It's Grant’s turn to exchange helpless glances with Bucky.

“What about your visitor?” Bucky asks, floundering for a topic and seizing the first that makes sense. “Steve said you had one. Wasn’t he – whoever he was, Steve or Bucky–”

“Bucky,” Steven cuts in kindly. “It was Bucky, but he – fuck, you two won’t believe this. He was born in the early 90s. Ended up a S.H.I.E.L.D agent. Met his Steve because he was in Strike Delta and worked with Alpha now and then. Said they got together after the whole Insight mess.”

Bucky can feel his brain kinda buzzing as he tries to process that. Grant swears colorfully under his breath.

“Shit, do you think there are any of us who’re born that fucking young?” he asks, and Bucky can’t tell whether it’s anger or something kinder giving his voice that edge. “Fucking hell. And every time, the two of us together, it’s like–”

“Fate,” Steven says, with an expression so soft that it hurts to look at him. “Like they wrote us into the stars.”

Bucky shivers, goosebumps breaking out across his skin.

“That’s a nice thought,” Grant says softly, eyes lowered and hazy.

Bucky can only think of Steve, who loves Bucky but doesn’t want him, except – except Bucky never asked, he just assumed, and it _was_ a reasonable assumption, but faced with so many Steves who want their Buckys, it’s hard to cling to his earlier conviction.

Someone covers his hand, and Bucky looks up to find Steven smiling gently at him, twining their fingers together.

Another palm comes to rest on his left forearm, metal on metal even through the flesh sleeves. Grant presses a kiss to Bucky’s temple, and Bucky reminded almost violently that it’s not just _their_ Buckys that these Steves want.

“Heavy conversation for a date, isn’t it?” Grant says, warm and amused.

“My bad.” Steven grimaces, then squeezes Bucky’s hand. “Got carried away.”

“Think we all did,” Grant starts, but Bucky cuts in.

“No. No, I’m glad we talked about that. It’s…good. Good to know.”

There’s more he wants to say that he can’t find the words for. But the way Grant and Steven are looking at him, he has the feeling he won’t need to.


	2. you're the face of the future, the blood in my veins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What’s the use of being a fucking supersoldier if he can’t take dick until he passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it ends! This is 15k in total—I think maybe 2k is not porn. Sappy, filthy porn. Enjoy! I half-assed the second round of edits because my brain’s a bag of ferrets these days and productivity is pretty hit-and-miss. Sorry about any quality issues 😅
> 
> Also, this update comes with extra goodies—[kocuria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria) is a talented angel and made graphics! They’re so damn gorgeous. There's also an image in the last chapter now!
> 
> I’ve got a [tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/) and you can find kocuria [here.](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/)

They walk back home.

It’s a distance that would wind a non-enhanced human even at this sedate pace, but the three of them barely sweat and keep up harmless conversation most of the way, nothing as charged as the talks they had earlier.

It was a nice date, maybe objectively the best Bucky’s ever had. Only way he can conceive of it being better is if it was Steve there with him, not surlily suffering through the company of some poor girl more interested in Bucky but there for Bucky, _with_ Bucky. But he can’t have that, not yet, though it’s a novelty to think ‘not yet’ instead of ‘not ever.’

He’s both disappointed and relieved when the house comes into view. He’s exhausted, mentally and emotionally, not using to being _so_ on for such a long time. But he doesn’t want this to end either, sad at the thought of losing the warm glow Grant’s and Steven’s attentions instilled in him.

It’s got to though. He knows that. They’re still committed men, and maybe they made an exception for Bucky because he’s another version of their respective partners, but Bucky’s well aware that that’s all it is. Well, that and probably a ploy to make Bucky’s Steve get with him.

He does sigh a little when he opens the front door.

“Well,” he says, without turning around to face the men behind him, “that was fu—”

Fingers curl around his jaw and yank him into a kiss.

It’s Steven, his beard scraping against the sensitive skin of Bucky’s shaved jaw as their mouths press hard together. Bucky barely has time to suck in a shocked breath before there’s a hand in his hair, steering him right into another mouth. The angle strains his neck, makes it hard to breathe, but that’s not why he gasps against Grant’s lips. He’s bolder than Steven, licking right in like he’s got no doubt that Bucky will let him inside.

Bucky does, moaning around the tongue curling filthily against his. There are more hands on him all of a sudden, cupping his ass and sliding up his shirt and wrapping loosely around his throat. A bearded face rubs against the side of his neck, sending sparks down his spine that spike almost unbearably when Grant bites down on his lip.

It makes Bucky’s head spin and knees weaken, but he’s held up by two pairs of strong arms, kissed and groped like they’ve been fucking starving for him.

Bucky breaks the kiss with a ragged gasp which trails into a moan when he catches sight of Grant’s reddened lips and dark eyes. He’s not given a break, Steven reaching for him to lead him into another wet kiss. It’s strange to kiss him with all that fuzz, but it’s not like Bucky hasn’t been imagining it ever since Steve showed up in Wakanda, calling himself Nomad.

Steven kisses more sweetly than Grant, but it’s deliberate in a way that makes Bucky’s toes curl.

When they part, Bucky’s chest is heaving and his whole body’s hot.

“I—what? But you’re married.”

“Yeah, to you,” Steven says, face so close Bucky can feel his breath on his skin. He turns Bucky around, manhandling him with a familiar ease, until he’s sandwiched between Steven and Grant, their sprawling bulks caging him in.

It makes Bucky’s dick perk up and take interest.

“Not me,” he says breathlessly, shoving down the part of him that wants to swallow the questions and just go back to those mind-numbing kisses. “It’s not me, not any more than you’re my Steve.”

“I know,” Grant says, nuzzling gentle into Bucky’s ear. “We know, Buck. But we slept with him, the Bucky who showed up in our world. Had a talk with my Bucky after. Let’s just say we both have standing permission to do this with any of our alternate selves.”

As if to punctuate his point, Grant sinks his teeth into Bucky’s lobe, tugging sharply, and there’s no holding back his moan or the stuttering jerk of his hips.

Steven makes a sound that’s almost a growl.

“Look at you, _god_. And yes. Same happened with me and Buck. Question now is if you want us even though we’re not your Steve.” He gives Bucky a slow, sweet once-over, lingering on his mouth and the dip of this throat. “Think we’ve got an idea of that, sweetheart.”

Fuck, that’s just not playing fair. Bucky shivers delicately at the endearment, and there’s no way they won’t feel it, pressed up so tight against him. Grant makes a soft noise and presses his open mouth to Bucky’s throat, just breathing against the skin, hot and wet. Bucky arches his neck into it helplessly, and Steven takes that as invitation to shuffle closer and kiss him, licking hungrily into Bucky’s open mouth.

Grant’s mouth detaches from his neck, and Bucky whines his protest into Steven’s mouth which only gets him kissed harder, deeper, hands pushing under his sweater again to grope greedily at bare skin.

“Look at that,” Grant breathes, and Bucky can feel it, the weight of his gaze. It makes him squirm, fingers scrabbling at Steven’s shoulders and reaching back to tug at Grant’s hips.

Steven breaks the kiss, and he’s breathing hard. Bucky stares at his wet, swollen lips and feels his stomach swoop.

“Bedroom,” he hears himself say.

There are twin noises of assent, but then Grant’s spinning him around and kissing him, all tongue and teeth, and there are hands working under his clothes, roving across his heated skin. He’s aware of them moving, a tangle of mouths and limbs, but it’s hard to register anything but wet, sliding tongues and fingers that grab his skin like they want to bruise him up.

Someone cups his ass with both hands and heaves, and Bucky shouts as he’s unceremoniously lifted up. He wraps his legs instinctively around the body holding him. Pure fucking muscle greets the clench of his thighs, and his stomach swoops with molten heat. He leans back to see, knowing already that it’s Grant.

He’s watching Bucky with a piercing stare, and he must have taken off his mask and wig at some point because it’s golden hair that frames a face Bucky could trace in his sleep.

Steven kisses the nape of his neck, a gentle pressure.

Bucky registers then that they’re in Steve’s bedroom. The door clicks shut behind them, and Grant strides forward, effortlessly carrying Bucky towards the bed. He doesn’t drop him on it but crawls in instead, knee-walking to the center with Bucky still wrapped around him. His muscles shift against Bucky with each movement, and fuck, it’s like he’s made of solid rock.

He lowers Bucky into the mattress with shocking gentleness, but the kiss he steals the next moment is almost violent.

“You joinin’?” Grant asks, breaking the kiss and leaving Bucky dazed. He looks away with a smirk, raising an eyebrow at Steven, perched on the edge, watching the two of them with burning eyes.

“Go on,” Steven says, smiling softly. “I’ll watch for now.”

Bucky shivers at that, attracting both their attention.

“Yeah?” Grant croons, looming over Bucky. “You’d like that? Him watching me take you apart?”

He would, fuck, he would, but damn if Bucky knew he was into that.

When he says nothing, Grant tips his chin up with his metal thumb—flesh sleeve abandoned, which Bucky didn’t even notice in between being kissed stupid. Grant rests two thick fingers against Bucky’s slightly parted lips, mouth curling into a slow, knowing smirk when Bucky’s breath hitches.

“Answer me when I ask a question, sweetheart.”

Bucky tenses a little, more surprised than anything, but when the moment passes, his heart’s racing and his dick’s hard enough to hurt. Grant’s watching him carefully, blue eyes narrowed, and something on Bucky’s face makes him grin suddenly, the expression strangely shark-like.

“Well?” he asks, soft and dangerous, and Bucky’s gut clenches at the tone.

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I’d like it.”

It’s so easy to say it, give Grant what he wants, and his answering expression is one of knowing approval. Bucky can’t look at it for long and turns to Steven instead, and that’s almost a mistake because Steven’s face is a mirror to Grant’s in more ways than one, and it all makes Bucky want to vibrate out of his damn skin.

“You’re a sweet little thing no matter where we are.”

It’s Steven who says it, and Grant hums in agreement but lifts his body off Bucky’s. Bucky bites his lips to hold back a whimper at the loss of all that pressure and heat, but his complaints die in his throat when Grant pulls his shirt over his head, exposing rippling muscles slick with sweat. Grant sees him watching and gives him a filthy smirk before climbing out of bed, already tugging at his belt.

“Help him out of those clothes, Steven,” he says, stripping methodically.

“My pleasure.”

Bucky’s hauled into a sitting position, Steven’s hands already working his sweater up. Bucky lifts his arms for it to be peeled off of him, and Steven shows his approval with a quick, biting kiss. Bucky’s torn between chasing his lips and arching his body for the appreciative press of palms on bare skin, but Steven takes the choice from him, scooting down to work on Bucky’s jeans. It’s no easy to task to peel them off his legs, even with Steven tugging and Bucky wriggling helpfully, but they manage, finally, to get them off. Bucky’s briefs get dragged down with the jeans, leaving him sprawled naked on the bed, cock conspicuously hard between his legs.

Steven wraps a hand around it, his thick fist curling loosely under the head. Bucky fucks up into it, half-helpless, but his hips are pinned down without mercy, Steven tsking at him with a crooked smile.

“Thought you just wanted to watch,” Grant says. Bucky looks at him, startled, and it’s not that he forgot he’s also here, just that his head’s buzzing from Steven’s hand on his cock. He can’t stop staring at Steven’s mouth and imagining how it would feel to have the bristles of his beard mark up skin far more sensitive than his jaw or neck.

“Couldn’t resist,” Steven says, giving Bucky’s cock a light squeeze. He moans, but they ignore him, and that shouldn’t be hot, but it is. “Look at him, all pretty and laid out. Want to eat him right up.”

“I know,” Grant says, shoving himself bodily between Bucky’s legs, forcing them to spread wide. “You can just join. Ain’t anyone gonna complain.”

Steven hums consideringly. He meets Bucky’s eyes and smiles before letting his gaze rove down the rest of him. It’s hard not to feel self-conscious under that intent stare, but there’s so much hunger in Steven’s eyes, and like a switch is slipped, Bucky’s nerves turn into ravenous need.

“Fuckin’ do something,” he snaps, trying to fuck up into Steven’s hand again. He gets bruises for his trouble, Steven’s fingers clamping down tight on his hips. Grant just laughs.

“You’ve got bite,” he says approvingly. He pats Bucky on the knee, then turns the touch into a smooth slide up his inner thigh. Bucky fucking trembles for him, hyperaware of the fingers resting idly on the crease of his right thigh, aching for them to creep higher or dip a little lower.

Steven sighs suddenly, the sound mournful.

“Maybe I will. But not now. I’ll watch.”

“Like it’s a chore for you.” Grant chuckles, the sound drowning out Bucky’s protesting whine when Steven lets go of his cock and moves back to perch at the edge. He’s still clothed, but as Bucky watches, he strips out of his grandpa-lumberjack clothes until he’s in just boxers that are tented impressively.

It makes him look at Grant, and fuck, that’s a monster of a thing sticking out from between his legs, hard and flushed and looking like it’ll split Bucky right in two.

Grant catches him looking and smirks, moving to let his dick rub along Bucky’s thigh. It’s a shock of heat, and Bucky jerks a little, hips twitching without Steven to hold them down.

“Lube,” Grant demands, but Bucky’s got no clue where to get it from. Steven moves though, and Bucky watches him open a drawer before his attention is forcibly returned to Grant by a mouth around his cock.

He cries out, reaching down automatically to grab Grant’s hair. Blue eyes meet his from above lips wrapped right around the head of Bucky’s dick. Grant doesn’t look away as he slides down, the wet heat of his mouth swallowing Bucky inch by inch. Bucky pulls at his hair, can’t help it, and his mouth works to form a warning because it’s been so fucking long since someone’s blown him and he fucking _can’t_ , but all that comes out are harsh, desperate noises. Grant stops after he’s taken Bucky halfway. He sucks, wet and filthy, tongue working gracelessly against the underside. Bucky keens for every second of it, hands clenching and unclenching in Grant’s hair.

When Grant pulls off, Bucky’s hips try to chase that maddening pleasure, but hands metal and flesh keep him pinned easily. Grant licks his lips, pink tongue darting out to touch his red, swollen mouth.

Steven reaches out to pass something to Grant, and Bucky resolutely doesn’t think of whether he bought the lube or appropriated it from Steve.

“You’ve been fucked before?” Grant asks conversationally as he sets the lube beside Bucky’s leg.

Bucky’s frozen for a too-long moment. He shakes his head slowly.

Grant’s eyes widen and his lips part in a loud exhale, but the next moment, surprise is replaced by that damning hunger.

“Fingers,” Bucky blurts out before Grant says something that might make him spontaneously combust. “And toys.” So many toys. “Never anyone else.”

“Saving yourself for someone?” Grant’s expression remains predatory, but his voice is soft, probing.

Bucky just snorts. He’s been with men, before the war and during, but they never went too far. Hands, usually. Mouths, sometimes. Half the time, Bucky thought of blue eyes and blond hair and bit his tongue on a name he shouldn’t say.

“Not that,” he says now, and it’s true. “Believe it or not, my sex life has been sparse between war and brainwashing and all the other fun shit the future offered.”

Steven snorts, and Bucky turns to look at him just in time to be caught in a kiss that starts out sweet and swiftly turns utterly filthy. Steven kisses his way down Bucky’s jaw, pausing to bite roughly at the underside. He pulls back and pecks Bucky again before settling back on folded legs, closer now than before.

“Damn,” Grant says, and then he’s there, mouth crashing into Bucky’s in a kiss that’s all teeth and bites that break skin.

Bucky tastes blood when Grant pulls away, and it’s heady.

“Agreed,” Steven says softy, gaze flickering between Bucky’s and Grant’s mouth.

He tries to picture it, either of them watching their doppelganger kiss Bucky, and he doesn’t really get it, but it does give him ideas.

“Now I feel left out,” Bucky says. He grins at their questioning glances, all bravado. “C’mon. I want a show too.”

Grant laughs, the sound more startled than anything. Steven looks skeptical when Grant turns to him, but he doesn’t resist Grant grabs his shoulder and tugs him forward.

And then Bucky’s got a front-row seat to Grant and Steven—to two Steves—kissing. Two blond heads, two pretty pink mouths, and fucking fuck, he played himself. _Jesus_ , that’s Grant slipping Steven some tongue, and Bucky has to wrap a hand around his dick and squeeze a little too hard just to stop himself from blowing it then and there.

“Happy?” Grant asks, grinning, when they pull back, a second before he notices Bucky’s hand on his dick. “Yeah, you are, aren’t you, baby? Hands off though. This pretty thing’s mine tonight.”

He knocks Bucky’s hand away, not all that gentle, and replaces it with his own, the metal one, cool and unforgiving.

“Fuck, I’m—” is as far as Bucky gets before Steven clears his throat loudly.

He’s looking at Grant.

“Wha—oh, right. My bad. Ours tonight,” Grant amends.

Bucky whines, words fleeing his dry throat.

Grant settles back between his legs and gives no warning before bending Bucky right in half.

“Hold ‘em,” he orders, and Bucky’s obedience is the easiest, most natural thing, but it makes his face flame. He feels so exposed like this, arms across his thighs as he keeps himself folded up, leaving his cock and balls and hole all bare for Grant’s prying gaze.

“Fuck.” It’s more groan than word, followed by Grant’s huge hands palming Bucky’s cheeks and spreading him wide. “Pretty as a picture, Buck.”

Bucky’s face is on fucking fire now, and the sound that falls from his mouth is downright inhuman.

Steven slides a hand into his hair, shifting even closer.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmurs, petting along Bucky’s hair and face. And he can say it, but it’s Bucky who’s got to somehow not break apart into atoms when Grant licks over his hole.

“Please,” he gasps, and he doesn’t know what he’s begging for. A shrill noise follows when Grant seals his lips around Bucky’s hole and sucks, wet and so damn dirty, and Bucky’s never—

Steven stifles his shout with his mouth, kissing Bucky with the same sloppy enthusiasm Grant is showing down below. He mouths a rough path down Bucky’s throat, all teeth and tongue. He licks over the bruise he left earlier, and, when Bucky moans, bites deep beside it. Bucky arches up, unwittingly shoving his ass into Grant’s face, and he gets his cheeks gripped hard and his hole fucking bitten for it.

Bucky howls, and Steven sinks his teeth into his pulse.

It takes no time at all for Bucky to lose his head to them. He’s kissed and eaten out and bruised and bit, and he writhes through it all, smothered in pleasure till he can’t tell which way’s up. He’s sucking on a tongue one moment, there’s a tongue inside his hole, then teeth on his collar, fingers tight and cruel around his nipple, and it drives him out of his mind, the pleasure an exquisite agony as it assaults him.

Grant pulls away after a charged eternity, but the loss of his mouth is appeased by fingers at his hole, rubbing dry except that Bucky’s sopping wet from Grant’s mouth and two slide in halfway all slick and easy. Bucky clenches down on them, moaning into Steven’s mouth, not kissing back now so much as panting and letting him swallow his sounds.

Steven pulls back, patting Bucky’s cheek as he whimpers for him, and just sits there, leaning back on his hands as he makes good on his promise to just watch. He seems to enjoy the show, eyes dark and appreciative as they roam from Bucky’s flushed, freshly bruised neck to his bent legs.

Grant twists his fingers once before pulling them out, the friction tight and scraping with just spit to wet the way. Bucky’s rim clenches like it wants to keep them inside, keep him stuffed full, but Grant hooks them cruelly and tugs free, tearing a weak cry out of Bucky as he does.

And fuck, Grant looks as well-fucked as Bucky feels, short hair in utter disarray, lips swollen, and cheeks flushed. It’s his eyes that spear Bucky through the gut—half-lidded, near black, and wanting.

He says nothing as he lubes his metal fingers, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Bucky when he pushes in with two, a rough, relentless push that doesn’t fucking stop until his knuckles are flush to Bucky’s rim. Bucky is the one who looks away first, eyes slipping closed as he struggles to take it all in, mind reeling from how these men want him and body twitching with the abundance of pleasure given by hands not his own.

Fingers come rest lightly on his right wrist, tender and almost hesitant for a moment before a whole, warm palm lays itself along Bucky’s hand. One side of it touches his leg too, soothing the trembling limb where it’s held up by Bucky’s equally shaky arm.

He slits his eyes open, staring at Steven’s hand over his before trying to meet his eyes. But it’s not Bucky he’s looking at. He’s listing a little to the side, neck craning forward, and Bucky realizes with an almost unbearable surge of arousal that Steven’s trying to watch Grant open Bucky up.

And open Bucky he does. His mouth was heaven all on its own, but it’s another thing entirely to have those cool metal fingers prying him open with just the right amount of roughness. Bucky has fingered himself with his left hand before, but Grant’s metal feels different inside him. Just as hard and unyielding, but something about the texture—

Grant finds the spot that sends fire burning through Bucky and drives three fingers right into it, and Bucky suddenly can’t give a fuck about texture.

Grant’s a ruthless bastard. He rubs at that spot, again and again and again, keeping determinedly at it while Bucky squirms as best as he can and works up to an inhuman pitch. And it’s not even that Bucky’s trying to get away; he doesn’t want to and he _can’t_ , but Grant and Steven keep him in place with nothing but a few fingers hooked inside him and a hand over his arm, like they know even their gentlest touch can bring Bucky to heel, Winter Soldier be damned.

It takes him by surprise, the way that thought propels him over the edge. It rings loud in his head as he shouts and spills untouched. Grant keeps on massaging his prostate through it like he’s trying to milk Bucky dry, and Steven holds on tighter, nails digging gently into Bucky’s thighs. It lasts forever, pulse after pulse shuddering through Bucky, the pleasure sharp and soul-deep.

He lets his legs fall once he comes down, too boneless to keep them up. Grant catches one with his flesh hand and keeps it bent as he ever so slowly pulls his fingers out of Bucky.

“You’re fucking perfect,” he says, sounding so sincere that Bucky has to turn his face away and let his hair hide his expression. Except Steven’s there, brushing the hair back and trailing the tips of his fingers delicately along Bucky’s cheek.

“You are, Buck,” Steven says, and Bucky makes a soft, shattered noise.

Grant rubs at his thighs like he’s trying to soothe Bucky, but there’s a grasping hunger in his mismatched fingers.

“Ready?” he asks, and it’s satisfying to hear how need has turned his voice guttural.

Bucky nods, eyes still closed and face still turned to the side. Grant’s fingers dig into his flesh.

“Say it.”

It’s an order, urgent and curt, and Bucky’s answer leaves him in a gasp.

“Please, yes.”

“Atta boy,” Steven praises. Grant’s reaction is a pleased hum and some slick sounds.

Bucky’s expecting it, but he still bites his lip bloody when hands slide under his ass and raise him effortlessly for the hot press of Grant’s cock. It feels fucking huge, bigger than it looked, the blunt head damn near burning as it forces Bucky’s rim to spread for it.

“Steve,” he whimpers, and it doesn’t matter he calls them Grant and Steven, they’re Steve, both of them, and it’s the name that spills like a prayer from Bucky’s mouth.

“Yeah,” Grant answers, voice tight like he’s forcing back a scream of his own. “It’s me, Buck, it’s us, c’mon, baby, open up for me, you can do it, I know you can, always take it so well, come on–”

He does, god, he does—opens right up and lets Grant in, walls clenching and clutching like they can’t stand to have him inside but would wither if he pulled out. Bucky loses the breath to shout but his mouth’s open in a soundless scream, whole body tense and trembling as Grant makes him take every inch of it, pushing in and in and _in_ until Bucky can feel it in his fucking throat.

“I changed my mind.”

The words take a few seconds to pierce through the pleasure-pain haze Bucky’s in. It takes him even longer to figure out who spoke.

“Yeah?” Grant asks. He’s grinning when Bucky pries his eyes open, but the edges of it are strained, something wild around his darkened eyes.

“Yeah, I want his mouth,” Steven says casually. He turns to Bucky, pinning him with the considerable force of his gaze. “That alright, Bucky? You gonna let me fuck your sweet mouth?”

Bucky moans, the words alone heating his already burning blood.

Steven thumbs his lips, nudging a little. Bucky parts for him at the barest suggestion of pressure, sucking hard on the breaching digit. It feels surprisingly good, simple and grounding.

“Yeah,” Steven murmurs, voice deep and pleased. “You are.”

He moves, looming over Bucky with every intention of straddling him until–

“No, wait.”

Steven freezes at Grant’s words. Bucky just whines, disappointed and still wound so tight he’s a breath away from bursting. They both stare at Grant, who grins, widely with too much teeth, wicked around the edges.

“Not like that,” he says. “I want to watch too, and I can’t with you straddling him. Gimme a second, move a little.”

Steven backs off politely, curiously eyeing Grant. Bucky does too, and he sees Grant coming, but that’s no comfort for the way he presses an impossible inch deeper into Bucky as he leans in or the maddening shift in angle when Grant slides both hands under Bucky’s back and hauls him upright.

The position’s strange, even as he instinctively wraps his limbs around Grant again. His dick’s still inside Bucky, not buried as deep as before but angled to prod right at his prostate, and then Grant moves, raising himself onto his knees with Bucky still clinging to him. It’s an impressive feat of core strength that goes right to Bucky’s lizard brain and makes his dick perk back up, but it’s the drag of Grant’s cock inside his ass that makes him rake nails down his back and _scream_.

“Shh,” Grant breathes, knee-walking—somewhere. Bucky’s too busy trying to keep his brain from melting to notice.

He’s dropped down with little ceremony, one of Grant’s hand supporting his head while the rest of Bucky’s body slams down to the mattress and is pinned by Grant’s bulk and weight. Bucky clenches hard around Grant’s cock, and it’s so fucking huge and hot, branding Bucky from the inside out.

The reason for the hand under his head is evident a moment later when Grant lowers Bucky’s head only for it to just hand limply out the edge of the bed.

Long legs come into view, and Steven’s face peers down at him, upside down.

“Huh,” he says, reaching down to touch Bucky’s mouth again, fingers brushing his lips tenderly. “This good, Buck?”

Right now, Bucky would agree to let these two strip the skin off his bones and rearrange his organs.

“Please,” he rasps. “Please, Steve.”

“Sweetheart,” Steven sighs, and then he’s shoving his boxers down and stepping out of them, and his cock’s so red it looks angry, and the size is—Bucky swallows past a suddenly dry throat, dread and excitement skewering him deep.

It’s been a seventy decades since he last sucked dick, and even with his hazy memory, he knows he’s never handled anything of this size. His throat’s gonna hurt like a bitch for a few hours, but as he opens his mouth in wordless invitation, Bucky can’t help but wish that the serum would be a little slower than usual in erasing these aches of his flesh.

Steven presses his cock against Bucky’s lips, sighing deeply when Bucky wraps his lips around the head. But he doesn’t push in, and Bucky’s got no leverage to take it deeper.

“Gimme your hand,” Steven says, and Bucky obeys, raising the left one because the metal’s steadier than trembling flesh. Steven guides it to his hip and coaxes Bucky’s fingers to curl over one hipbone. “Hold on. Let go if you need me to stop.”

Un-fucking-likely, Bucky thinks, and then Steven’s sliding his cock into his mouth and down his throat, and he’s choking and sucking in air and thoughts are all very distant.

They’re rough with him, pushing him farther and faster with every passing moment, like they know his needs better than he does. Grant fucks him like he wants to break Bucky on his cock, harsh and fast and brutal, almost pulling out every stroke only to ram back in, shifting angles every other thrust just to keep Bucky clenched tight and screaming his throat raw. He pushes him onto Steven too, rocking him with every thrust into the cock in his mouth. It muffles Bucky’s cries, gets him keening around the thick heat of it. There’s no finesse to it, just an open mouth and convulsing throat, and Steven doesn’t need one, violently content to take what he wants from Bucky with fingers curled around his jaw and lazy thrusts of his hips.

And through it all, Bucky clasps Steven’s hip for dear life and tightens his shaking thighs around Grant’s waist, holding on desperately as he’s systematically broken down into a thing of helpless pleasure.

The hand around his dick is the last straw.

Bucky’s moan is muffled by Steven’s cock, and it’s easy, so easy, to screw his eyes shut and let the wave swallow him hole.

They fuck him through it, relentless and merciless. Bucky feels like a ragdoll, limply rocked between their plunging cocks and grasping hands. He whines at the scrape of nails along his scalp and swallows every drop Steven gives him. He doesn’t have the energy to moves his ass back into Grant’s dick, but he tightens around him as he comes, milking him through every spurt of curious heat.

It's nothing, he thinks dimly, like fucking himself with a toy. Grant’s so hot, and there’s so much come, dripping out of him when Grant pulls out.

He feels oddly hollow without the two of them in him; his gaping rim twitches at the sudden emptiness, and his tongue feels around the spaces Steven filled. His mouth tastes like come, and his walls are drenched in it. It’s filthy, and Bucky loves it, doesn’t know how he went so long without it.

He just flops there like a starfish, letting Grant and Steven move him around as they want. It’s so easy to close his eyes and sink into these gentler touches, feeling safe and comforted in a way he rarely ever does. Someone delicately sweeps aside the strands of hair sticking wetly to his forehead and runs those same fingers through his hair. A kiss is pressed to his temple, and the lack of a beard brushing the skin lets Bucky know that it’s Grant and not Steven. He turns into him, keeping his eyes closed as he tries to nuzzle in, and feels Grant’s chest rumble with laughter as he presses his mouth to Bucky’s, kissing him sweet and tender.

Steven must be the one pressing something warm and wet over Bucky’s belly and then dragging it lower down, cleaning between his thighs and cheeks. Bucky hisses when it presses against his hole, the rim swollen and sensitive, but two sets of shushing noises greet him. Steven’s even more careful there, and Grant keeps petting Bucky’s hair and peppering kisses all over his face. Bucky’s bones feel like they’re made of water.

They settle on either side of him afterwards, pressing close and throwing their tree-trunk arms over Bucky. It’s suffocating in the best way, and Bucky relaxes into the Steve Rogers sandwich, brushing absent kisses along their closest body parts before giving into the siren call of sleep.

“That’s just like him,” he hears one of them say, voice too low for Bucky’s sleepy brain to pick out the peculiar cadences that mark Grant and Steven.

“A Bucky Barnes is a Bucky Barnes is a Bucky Barnes is a Bucky Barnes,” says the other, and that’s funny, but Bucky’s too gone to laugh.

-

Bucky wakes at some unholy hour with an uncomfortably full bladder and a mouth that tastes like something came in it and died. He almost elbows Steven while climbing out of the bed, and by the time he’s got both feet on the floor, two pairs of eyes are watching him, nearly invisible in the pitch dark bedroom but a physical weight on Bucky’s skin.

“Gotta piss,” Bucky grunts, voice fucked hoarse. “My room, after. Morning, Steve gonna come.”

“Ah,” someone says after a while. “Guess that would be hard to explain.”

It’s Steven. Bucky mumbles an agreement, then sets about stumbling over to the bathroom. Taking a piss and sloshing water in his mouth doesn’t make him any less sleepy, but it does give him enough awareness to truly appreciate the state his body’s in. It can’t have been more than three or four hours since he crashed because the marks on his neck are still faintly pink and his ass is extremely sore in the best fucking way.

Bucky happily floats out of the bathroom. He wishes the two a good night and pats both their feet before leaving the room.

He’s out almost as soon as his head hits his own pillow.

-

When he wakes again, there’s daylight filtering through the curtains, making him burrow into the warm body next to him.

Warm body next to—

Sleep flees like someone dumped a bucket of ice water on him because there’s only one person in the world who’d just crawl into Bucky’s bed and cuddle up to him. In his haste, he does elbow Steve in the stomach, with the metal arm to boot, and Steve’s peaceful, drooling face contorts into a grimace as he comes to with a start.

“Ow,” he mumbles fuzzily, blinking a couple times like it’s a struggle to focus on Bucky. “S’at for?”

“Sorry,” Bucky says, keeping a tight lid on his panic. “It’s okay, go back to sleep.”

Steve blinks a couple more times but does as he’s told, though not before tightening his limbs—arms _and_ legs—over Bucky and yanking him closer like a dog with its favorite plushie. Bucky’s griped at Steve a hundred thousand times about his tendency to turn into an octopus in his sleep, but Steve denies it each time like the lying liar he is. Bucky never pushes because the only real issue he’s got with the arrangement is how his dick inevitably takes interest. He likes everything else about Steve Cuddlebug Rogers, including how his dick also perks up sometimes. Sure, morning wood isn’t an indication of desire, but Bucky will take what he can get, and maybe it’s sleazy, but for fuck’s sake, all he ever does is lie real still and bask in how Steve’s hard dick is nestled against his thirsty fucking ass for a few minutes until Steve comes awake and rolls away with a sleepy huff.

And it’s a bad fucking idea to think about it now because, yeah, there he is, Bucky Junior springing to life.

“Fuck me,” Bucky swears under his breath and means it only a little literally.

Steve makes a sleepy noise and shuffles impossibly closer. He sticks his nose into Bucky’s neck, and he has to hold back a yelp when Steve fucking nuzzles into it.

“You smell nice,” Steve breathes against Bucky’s skin. “Different,” he adds.

Then he says nothing.

“Steve?” Bucky calls very quietly.

There’s no response. Steve’s breathing has settled into the rhythm of sleep.

Bucky lies there, wide away and trapped with Steve barnacled to him. He can’t stay stiff for long though. Steve’s arms have always been comforting, even when he was more bone than flesh and even when Bucky was only starting to really know him again. He relaxes into it. He notices, as he does, that his throat doesn’t throb with bruises anymore. His ass still aches a bit, but for the most part, the night’s sleep has erased all marks of yesterday’s activities.

Bucky smiles a little wistfully and snuggles up to Steve.

-

Steve wakes up properly a couple of hours later. By then, it’s full light outside, and Bucky, long since resigned to his fate as Steve’s favorite teddy bear, is idly watching the pale blue curtains lit up by sunshine and carefully not listening to the sounds of Grant and Steven going about their lives in the rest of the house.

Steve snorts into Bucky’s hair like the absolute charmer he is and rolls away, throwing his body into a feline stretch without even opening his eyes. Bucky watches Steve’s soft sleep shirt ride up to reveal a solid abdomen and looks away hastily, right in time for Steve’s baby blues to blink open. They narrow fuzzily at Bucky, then crinkle into a sleep-sweet smile that lances right through Bucky’s heart no matter how many times he sees it.

“Mornin’, Buck.”

“Morning. When did you get back?”

“’Round three? You didn’t stir.”

“Never do. I know you.”

Steve looks so smug at that, like he knows Bucky would wake at the sound of a scuttling rat but would sleep right through Steve crawling under the covers and draping his overblown mountain of a body all over Bucky, which, yeah, fair, Bucky would be smug about that too.

It's not like it’s a new development though. Their little sleepovers were a thing long before Grant and Steven showed up, and Bucky was the one to start it, surprising himself one night after nightmares tore him out of sleep and the sound of Steve’s own ghosts in the room over lured him to that bed. Soon enough, it turned into something that was, a little strangely, about not being close enough even though they shared a home and lived in each other’s pockets. Ironically enough, they ended up in each other’s beds on nights following days that found them avoiding the other—well, mostly Bucky avoiding Steve—like the plague.

Sam liked to say that between the two of them, they could use a century of therapy, and Bucky liked to flip him off with extreme prejudice, but it wasn’t like he was wrong.

“You look happy,” Steve says suddenly, startling Bucky out of his head and into the tangible present.

“Eh?”

Steve shrugs, wide awake now.

“Happy,” he repeats. “More than you’ve been in a while.” He pauses, then his jaw sets in that way Bucky recognizes as determination and discomfort all in one. “I know you—that you don’t really like how often I’ve been gone. I’m sorry, Buck. It’ll be better soon. I’ve got a clear idea of how I’m gonna delegate now. Maybe we can finally go on that roadtrip we’ve been planning, I dunno…”

He trails off, looking at Bucky with wide, hopeful eyes as he processes all that.

“Calling the shit we mumbled while we were high on a week’s worth of sleep deprivation doesn’t count as planning, Rogers,” Bucky says, well aware that his tone’s too soft for the words. He smiles, can’t help it. “But yeah. That would be nice.”

Steve’s smile’s like sunshine, warm and golden. Always has been, but it comes more often now than it did in Brooklyn of the 40s or the war or in Bucky’s little hut in Wakanda.

“Okay,” he says brightly.

“I’m alright though,” Bucky says because he can’t have Steve running around heaping guilt on himself for every little thing. “I’m a big boy, Steve. Can handle some alone time, could use it even. I just don’t like that you’re so caught up in all this though you retired.”

“I know.” Steve grimaces. “Should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. The team’s coming along nicely though. Oh, and Sharon came around today. Wanted to meet the new kids, what with her being the CIA’s official liaison to the Avengers.”

And just like that, the warm glow Bucky’s been basking since he woke up plastered to Steve vanishes.

“Oh?” he asks neutrally, knowing Steve won’t miss the change in tone but hoping he’ll chalk it up to Bucky’s ongoing aversion to all things American government. Sure, it’s good that the Accords have been dissolved post-Snap and the alphabet agencies are working with the Avengers instead of making their jobs harder, but Bucky wants no part of that shit.

“Yeah,” Steve says, smiling sympathetically. He’s not a fan of the government either these days. “She and Wanda really hit it off. Kinda surprising. But it’s nice. I was getting a bit worried about her. Wanda, I mean. After Vision, she…well. Yeah. It’s good to see her make friends.”

“It is.”

Bucky’s smile is more genuine this time because he does like Wanda, wary as her mind-bending powers make him. She’s a good kid. He contemplates leaving it at that, and maybe he would have if he was as firmly convinced as he used to be that Steve’s straight and unattainable. But Grant and Steven have given him hope despite Bucky’s best attempts to resist it, and he has to ask because he doesn’t want to set himself up for heartbreak. He can love Steve in secret forever, but he can’t bring that love to the light only to have it denied. He can’t take that.

“You two figure things out yet?” Bucky asks and holds back a wince at how empty his voice sounds.

“Huh?” Goddamn Steve Rogers and his confused puppy eyes. “Yeah, I guess? There’s not much to figure out now, with most of the Avengers benched and the rest in training. Sam’s doing all the superhero work, and he deals with Sharon directly. I guess we’ll see how things are, come next world-ending catastrophe.”

“Next world-ending catastrophe, you’ll be right out there with the rest of them, retirement be damned,” Bucky snarks, only a little caustic. Steve is and will always be Steve. “And I’ll be stuck watching your six again.”

“Probably,” Steve says, grinning unrepentantly. “I wouldn’t mind that. It’s the day-to-day grind that I want out of. And Buck, you know you ain’t stuck with it. No one will force you to do anything again. I promise.”

Steve Rogers, always making promises he can’t keep but making you believe he can anyway. Bucky loves him so much, it hurts.

“I know, asshole. But we both know the kind of shit that you get up to without me there. I’m doing myself a favor.”

Steve nods, accepting what Bucky is really saying. He looks so soft in the filtered morning light, and Bucky aches for him. That’s why he makes himself ask, again, though his stomach turns itself over as he forces the words out.

“But that’s not what I was talking about. About Sharon. You and her—you, are you? A thing?”

Fuck, could he make it any more obvious–

“Oh,” Steve mumbles, lightbulb flickering to life. “Oh, no, Bucky. We’re not. We ain’t like that.”

“You kissed her. Sure seemed like a thing,” Bucky says, surprising himself. His bitterness doesn’t show, though, hidden from all the practice he had watching Steve and Peggy Carter together. It’s always the damn Carters, but Peggy was a hurricane of a woman, and Bucky could understand all too well why Steve was so gone on her. But he doesn’t know Sharon.

Steve just shrugs.

“It was just the once. And I dunno, Buck. It’s not like I was thinking straight then. I knew she wanted me, and she went to all that trouble for us, and I just—” He shrugs again with a furrow in his brows that Bucky wants to kiss away. “There’s nothing between us except friendship. And I don’t want that to change. Besides, she’s Peggy’s niece, and that’s—fuckin’ weird, not going to lie.”

“Not like you were married to her,” Bucky points out, playing devil’s advocate because he’s his own worst enemy that way.

“Still,” Steve insists. “Why are we talking about this again? Because if you’re going to take over Nat’s role as matchmaker, I’m going to short-sheet your bed for a month straight.”

Steve’s voice falters a little on Natasha’s name, but it’s a drastic change from after the battle, when he told Bucky she was gone and then refused to so much as speak her name for months.

“Hey,” Bucky says very gently, “I was there first.”

“Don’t remind me,” Steve grips.

Bucky reaches out to poke his frown, smiling when it deepens, then smoothens under the touch.

“I just want you to be happy, Steve,” he says, and that’s honest in every conceivable way.

“Hey. I am, Buck. I’ve got you.”

Bucky believes him, and he hopes.

-

Steve leaves again my mid-afternoon.

“Just a couple days, Buck, no more of this shit after, I promise,” he says before he goes, murmuring the words while squeezing the breath out of Bucky in a parting hug.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky pants when he’s released. “Get out of here, you big lug. Don’t forget to eat dinner.”

“Yes, mother.”

Bucky flips off the back of Steve’s bike.

He stays there for a few minutes once Steve has vanished. He should go back inside. Grant and Steven are both there. Bucky hasn’t seen them much today, though he heard Steve talk to them when he went out for breakfast that was late enough to count as brunch. They were both gone when Bucky joined Steve, though still in the house.

Last night was amazing, and Bucky’s blood is still thrumming pleasantly from the sex, but he doesn’t know what happens now. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it turns weird and awkward.

Well, only one way to find out.

The living room and kitchen are empty. Steve’s bedroom door is closed. Bucky takes a fortifying breath, then goes and knocks.

“Come in,” Steven calls.

Bucky opens the door and hesitates only for a second before stepping inside and closing it behind him.

Grant’s sprawled on the bed, phone in hand, though he’s looking at Bucky and not the screen now. Steven’s sitting on the floor under the window, a book in hand, and he’s looking at Bucky too. Over a week’s worth of practice hasn’t rendered him immune to being the object of more than one Steve’s attention.

Bucky leans back against the door.

“Hey,” he says like the lame old man he is.

“Hello there,” Grant returns, grinning.

“How are you feeling?” Steven asks, concern softening his—everything.

“Fine,” Bucky says automatically. Then he thinks on it and adds, “Good. Kinda well-fucked.”

“Only kinda?” Grant asks somewhat predictably. “We’ll have to try harder next time.”

“Next time?” Bucky raises an eyebrow, keeping his face calm despite the sudden explosion of butterflies in his belly. “Bold of you to assume there will be one.”

“Aw, baby,” Grant says, tossing his phone aside as he heaves himself onto his knees with boneless grace. Bucky flattens himself against the door even as his cock perks up a little.

“Grant,” Steven calls, admonishing. Grant just looks calmly back at him. “Bucky, you know we won’t do anything you don’t want us to.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, but his cheeks heat a little. Steven’s sweet concern is starkly different from Grant’s predatory interest, but they both get to Bucky the same way. It makes him feel wanted, needed.

“’Course I know that,” he says, finally peeling himself off the door. “Sorry I had to scram in the middle of the night.”

Grant pats the bed, and Bucky sits down on one edge. Steven uncoils from the floor and joins them too, sitting close enough to Bucky that he can reach out and touch.

“We understand,” Steven tells him, smiling. “We heard Steve come in too.”

“You two fucked?” Grant intersects, an unholy light in his eyes.

“No, you fucking ingrate.”

Grant laughs, low but full-bodied, and Bucky catches Steven watching him with a fond gaze. They share a glance, secretly endeared because ex-Winter Soldier Steve is markedly different from the frozen-in-the-ice Steves, but he’s got his own special charm.

“I notice you two made yourself scarce,” Bucky says, a hint of a question in the sentence.

Steven shrugs sheepishly.

“Wasn’t sure if you’d want to see us. Especially with Steve around. Didn’t want to make things awkward.”

Bucky lets out a relieved breath.

“Thank fuck. Not that you two weren’t there,” he hastens to add at their matching looks of crestfallen caution. “I was worried too, s’all. And now I feel like a goddamn teenager, thank you.”

“When you were an actual teenager, you were making out with half the girls in your class and drawing the eyes of some of the boys too.” Grant drones the whole thing in the flattest tone possible. “Teenage Buck would be on his knees already, sweetheart.”

Steven listens with wide eyes, glancing between Bucky’s indignant flush and Grant’s smirking mouth. Bucky remembers, then, that he didn’t grow up with his Bucky. He also hasn’t, by the looks of it, quite digested that Grant and Bucky share that past.

“Fuck you,” Bucky says a beat too late. “You tellin’ me you want me on my knees, Grant?”

“Why, you offering?”

It’s a taunt, asked with a shit-eating grin. Bucky’s answer is only honest.

“And if I am?”

It’s shocking, how quickly the mood changes. The air of light humor vanishes, tension brewing.

Grant’s eyes darken, and Steven reaches out, covering Bucky’s knee with one palm.

“I’d be a fool to refuse,” Grant says, voice low and considering. “Ain’t that right, Steven?”

Bucky flicks his eyes to Steven, heart in his throat. He’s watching Bucky with narrowed eyes, a corner of his mouth tilted up. Bucky wants to press his lips to it, drag his jaw along his beard.

“Quite,” Steven says in the end. “Think it’s my turn, hm, Bucky? You gonna let me in you?”

Jesus fucking Christ, this one’s zero to sixty.

Bucky swallows down a moan and nods, and he doesn’t kiss Steven so much as lurch forward and get swept into a clash of teeth and tongue. Steven kisses like he’s trying to show Bucky what he wants to do to his ass, tongue fucking in and curling wickedly, and it turns Bucky’s brain to mush. Grant’s no help, kissing up on Bucky’s neck and sliding his hands under his loose t-shirt.

They manhandle him with practiced ease, stripping him with nimble fingers. It’s easier with all of them in comfy sweatpants and loose tops, but the hot press of all that bare skin is no less a miracle than it was yesterday.

Bucky does end up on his knees—all fours in the middle of the bed, sucking Grant’s cock while Steven opens him up from behind. He’s slower about it than Grant was, pumping a single, maddening finger in and out and in and out until Bucky’s pulling off Grant’s dick to beg for _more, please, fuck,_ and he gets a fist in his hair shoving him back on it for his trouble. He likes it, like the rough handling, god, he likes it, but it makes him sloppy, all enthusiasm and no finesse as he drools and gags on Grant’s dick.

Steven works up him up to three, taking his sweet fucking time, and Bucky’s all but sobbing around the cock ramming down his throat when the fingers withdraw with a firm tug at the rim that promises more.

There’s a swat on his ass, making Bucky jerk, and Steven says, “We gotta move a bit. I want you on top, Buck.”

Grant makes a harsh but approving sound, hand tightening in Bucky’s hair and holding him in place as he drags his cock out of his mouth. He stops to bump it against Bucky’s lips, smearing the mess around before pulling away completely. Bucky licks up the mix of spit and precum, the taste a punch to the gut. His own dick’s hanging untouched between his legs, hard and wet.

Steven leans against the headboard. He’s a vision, golden and majestic, all ripped muscles and gleaming skin. His cock stands proud, curving to the side, making Bucky ache to have it in his mouth, his ass, everywhere.

He can’t resist pressing a kiss to it, almost tender. He licks the slit before he backs away, and they taste different, Steven and Grant, and it makes him wonder what his Steve tastes like, whether he’ll be bitter-salt or rich and dark

Grant’s the one who slicks up Steven’s dick, and it seems to take him by surprise, a hoarse groan escaping him at the touch of metal on his cock. Bucky watches, transfixed, but it’s over all too soon and it’s beginning too, Grant pulling back and giving Bucky a smirking nudge. He climbs on Steven, straddling him. He’s never done this before, but he’s had girls ride him back before the war, and he’s got an idea of the mechanics.

That doesn’t prepare him even remotely to feel Steven’s huge cockhead press at his rim and the simultaneous realization that he’s gotta bear down and take all of it.

Bucky makes a noise, tight and a little helpless, and the want on Steven’s face turns into ravenous need.

“C’mon,” he whispers, sweet and coaxing. “You can do it, Buck.”

Bucky, with his hands on Steven’s shoulders and his knees braced on the bed, rubs his hole against the head, trying to summon the nerve to slide down. It’s an unwitting tease, though, and Steven’s body shows the strain, muscles tensing as he fights not to just fuck up into Bucky.

A warm chest presses against Bucky’s back. Metal fingers come to rest on his stomach, splaying wide over heated skin as Grant’s flesh hand tangles with Bucky’s left one.

“Relax,” he murmurs into Bucky’s ear, soft and intimate. “Here, baby. You want me to help?”

“Please,” Bucky gasps, surrendering to that knowing touch.

Grant’s hand moves ever so slowly from Bucky’s stomach to his hip, curling along the bone there. He applies the lightest of pressure, pushing down, but Bucky follows the directive like he’s got a gun to his head. It burns a little when Steven breaches his rim, but there’s been enough lube and slow, torturous prep to make it a smooth, filthy slide, and Bucky gets it almost halfway in before he has to stop and catch his breath.

Grant kisses his nape and rubs soothing circles along Bucky’s hip. Steven’s a thing of beauty under Bucky, eyes screwed shut and hands fisted in the sheets.

“Bucky,” he moans, sounding absolutely gone, and it’s like a hook in Bucky’s gut, tugging him down and down.

He bottoms out with a ragged cry. Steven hisses through clenched teeth. His cock fills Bucky up so well, reaching so deep and getting him hot. He can hear Grant’s breathing turn harsh, and that makes his blood burn too.

Bucky starts to move, thigh muscles bulging as he starts off with a fast, bouncing pace, not letting Steven slip out more than an inch or two before swallowing him back in. It’s a sweet, dirty grind, pressing in on his walls in all the right ways. Steven’s carefully still under Bucky, but his eyes are wide and wild as he watches him fuck himself on his cock. Grant’s a solid presence behind him, petting Bucky’s belly and chest and thighs, kissing his neck and whispering filthy praise in his ear.

“That’s it, look at you go, fuck, baby, hottest damn thing I’ve ever seen. You’re a natural, you know that? Take it so well, every fucking time, can’t believe no one’s ever fucked you before, _look_ at you.”

He fists a hand in Bucky’s hair and yanks his head back, forcing a shout out of him. He doesn’t stop moving, isn’t sure he can, and now, when every thrust shoves pitiful little noises out of him, his mouth forced wide open, helpless to hold in the sounds.

Grant swears again, gruff and colorful, and and his hands are moving, palms hot and groping, but Bucky stops breathing when fingers touch him where he’s stretched tight around Steven’s cock.

Steven must feel it too. He groans and loses control for the first time, hips bucking to shove his cock deep into Bucky, making him bounce.

“Fuck, oh, that’s gorgeous.”

Grant rubs more firmly at Bucky’s rim, teasing. His fingers vanish, but Bucky doesn’t get time for more than a gulping breath before they return, slick this time, and press hard like—like they want to—

“Steve!”

The name’s a frantic scream, but it turns into a keening cry when Grant pushes a finger inside, somehow fitting it in along Steven’s cock. Bucky stops moving, every muscle locked tight as he clenches hard around the intrusion.

“Grant,” Steven chokes out, looking as shocked as Bucky feels.

“He can take it,” comes Grant’s voice, dark and placid at the same time. He nips at Bucky’s ear, licks to soothe the sting. “Ain’t that right, Buck?”

“I—I don’t, I—”

Grant’s metal hand, still tangled in Bucky’s, squeezes reassuringly.

“Ssh, sweetheart. You say the word, and I’ll stop. But if you don’t, if you let me keep going, we’ll see how much you can really take. And Buck, I’m thinkin’ you can take a lot, open right up for us both.”

The air is punched right out of his lungs as Bucky imagines what Grant is implying. It’s a hell of a picture, as terrifying as it is enticing.

“You’ll break me in half,” Bucky manages to gasp, barely recognizing the needy wreck his voice has become. “God, I can barely—it won’t, it won’t _fit_.”

But he wants it to, and that realization shudders through his body, makes him clench around Steven’s cock and Grant’s finger.

“Maybe we will,” Grant muses, humming consideringly. “Wanna find out, Buck?”

“Fuck, Grant,” Steven says. His hands fly to Bucky’s hips and clench like he’s the one holding on for dear life. “You crazy son of a bitch.”

Grant laughs, and there’s something about the sound that creeps tendril-like into Bucky’s veins and burns a raw need into every capillary.

“Yes.”

Steven’s nails dig into Bucky’s hips. Behind him, Grant stops breathing for a second.

“Yeah?” he asks, more rumble than word. “You want us both in you?”

“I think you’ll split me in two, but fuck it, yes. I want it.”

It’s Grant’s turn to moan, and he shows his pleasure by biting hard at Bucky’s throat, deep enough to bruise. Bucky moves helplessly at that, the pain prompting a short little bounce that tears a gasp out of Steven and reminds Bucky all too well how fucking full he already is.

Christ, what did he just bite off—

Grant tugs at his hole, his finger crooking cruelly like it’s going to stretch Bucky out right then and there, but that’s nothing compared to the pressure of a second finger nudging at his rim, slick with lube and demanding entry.

Bucky tries to bear down, but Grant doesn’t need the help. Opens Bucky up with the same brutal efficiency he used last night. Bucky’s too stunned to even cry out, but Steven does, a curse mixed in with the shout.

“Move,” Grant orders, quiet and firm, and Bucky lurches to life like he can’t quite help it.

It’s one thing to ride Steven’s cock, another to ride that and two obscenely long fingers. His movements are graceless, unsteady things, more desperation than rhythm, and every press of cock and finger against his walls winds him up tighter, makes him cock drip like a broken pipe. He thinks he could come like this, balanced on the edge of pleasure and pain, trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.

Grant adds a third finger with little ceremony, and this time, Bucky does scream.

He stops moving, abruptly drained, and slumps back against Grant’s strong body. He keeps holding Bucky’s hand gently even as he stretches him out with no mercy. Steven’s grip on his hips is grounding too, especially when he runs those hands up Bucky’s body, stroking along his chest and shoulders. He’s a sweaty, flushed mess under Bucky, and there’s so much desire in his eyes as he watches Bucky gasp soundlessly under Grant’s ministrations. It makes his chest ache in a sharp, not unpleasant way.

“Alright?” Grant asks, pressing a sweet kiss to Bucky’s temple. His fingers are still inside Bucky and so’s Steven, the two of them waiting for him to adjust. Bucky doesn’t know how he’s supposed to not choke on his breath at being stuffed to the brim like this.

But he nods because he doesn’t want them to stop, want them to keep to keep going, fuck him till he breaks.

Steven’s the one who moves, holding Bucky tight as he fucks up into him, grunting with a gravelly voice.

“God, the two of you…” he trails off, eyes closing as his hips pick up speed, and then Grant’s moving to, moving his fingers in time to Steven’s thrusts, spreading and tugging like he wants to leave Bucky gaping, and it hurts and it feels so good, and Bucky’s just caught in sensation, mowed down in a wave of it.

Grant digs his teeth into Bucky’s nape and pulls his fingers out. Steven leans in and kisses Bucky’s shout off his lips, holding him close as his whole body shudders. Grant’s the one who palms his ass, appreciatively at first and then with purpose, gripping tight and lifting, moving Bucky off Steven’s dick. It drags up his walls, sets him on fire, and Bucky feels so fucking empty without anything in him, hole clenching hungrily around nothing.

“Stay like that,” Grant says, leaving Bucky poised above Steven’s cock. He makes a mournful noise, and Steven kisses him, gentle and teasing, distracting Bucky with playful lips and fleeting slips of tongue. He’s good at it, can drive Bucky crazy with kisses that start out sweet and turn gut-wrenchingly filthy, and it’s really not his fault that he doesn’t notice what Grant’s doing until there are two cockheads all pressed up against him.

“Fucking—” he gasps, choking on his own words when the pressure intensifies. “Steve, _Steve_ —”

“It’s okay,” Steven soothes, brushing his mouth over Bucky’s cheeks, jaws, the corners of his eyes.

“Easy there, sweetheart, breathe,” Grant murmurs from behind. “Yeah? You wanna take this?”

“It’s—I don’t—Christ, what did the serum _do_ to you?

Identical laughter spills out of Grant and Steven. It’s Steven who grabs Bucky’s cock and gives it a teasing tug. The touch races up his neglected dick, makes it throb needily in Steven’s hand.

“Not very different from anything it’s done to you, Buck.” Steven gives it another tug, rougher this time. “At least that’s what Grant tells me.”

“Mm, I don’t know about you, Bucky, but I mine and I were going at it from around when we figured out how to use our dicks. You sure weren’t this hung then.”

“Fuck you,” Bucky hisses, face flaming, wanting rather desperately to vanish into the ether but held firmly in the tangible realm by their grips on his body and his heart.

“We’re trying,” Grant says, pressing his toothy grin to Bucky’s shoulder. “You gonna let us, baby?”

Bucky shivers again, and maybe Steven takes pity on him because he gives Bucky’s dick a good few strokes. Good intentions but that just scatters the thoughts he’s been trying in vain to gather and turns him into a thing of squirming need.

Steven realizes that all too soon and lets go, and he makes sympathetic noises at Bucky’s plaintive whimper, but the asshole’s smiling the whole time.

“C’mon, Buck,” he says, one of those huge damn hands cupping Bucky’s face all soft and tender. “Let us in.”

And god, how’s Bucky going to resist that?

“Yes,” he rasps, gut tight and fluttery from sheer anticipation. “Yes, please, you can, yes.”

Grant swears, and then he’s doing it, pressing his and Steven’s cocks harder against Bucky’s twitching hole. Bucky clutches Steven’s shoulders and looks down, trying to see, but the angle’s not good and the pressure’s making his vision go white, but then they’re pushing in, and Bucky can’t do anything but press his face into Steven’s neck and try not to scream.

He fails impressively.

It’s a shrill, violent sound, breaking halfway into a litany of nonsense words.

They both keep pushing in, and they’re not unaffected, either of them. Grant’s panting behind him, and Steven’s swearing incessantly under his breath, polite composure abandoned. It winds Bucky up like nothing else; he can feel Grant’s fist holding the dicks together, but then it’s gone and there are hands on his hips forcing him _down_ and fuck, everything’s too much, he’s—

He doesn’t realize what’s happening, stunned by how the convulsive clench of his walls make him drown in sensation, nothing in his mind except how full he is, how hot and huge they feel, how fucking _good_ —

It’s Grant’s fingers trailing through the wetness and smearing it on Bucky’s skin that clues him in.

Bucky opens eyes that ache from being shut so tight and looks down at himself. His cock’s still half-hard but spent, his stomach and chest splattered in come. He stares at it for a few, weightless seconds before he understands.

The sound that comes out of him is high and helpless, more animal than human.

He can feel his lovers’ reactions to it—Steven’s hungry touch on his ass and Grant’s low growl.

“God, Buck—” Steven begins, and that’s when the door’s kicked down.

Literally kicked down. It makes Bucky start, tension racing through his entire body, and he regrets it the next moment, hearing Steven and Grant groan his tandem as his own body shudders at the stimulation.

From the doorway, Steve stares with wide eyes and an open mouth.

His expression, in the brief glimpse Bucky caught before his mind went blank, was angry but now it’s just shocked, blue eyes impossibly bright as they take in the tableau on the bed.

“What—what the fuck’s happening?”

Bucky’s the one who answers, surprising himself.

“Thought you left.”

In hindsight, that may not have been the best thing to say. His voice is utterly wrecked, more a hoarse whisper than anything. It’s not like Steven can’t see the state he’s in, but he still jerks when he hears Bucky, whole body twitching like he stuck in hand into a power socket.

“I came back,” Steve says a little numbly. “There was—what the fuck. What the hell are you doing to him?”

That’s directed at Grant and Steven, and Bucky’s somewhat offended that Steve just assumed this is being done to him like Bucky’s some helpless damsel in a third-rate bodice ripper, but he’s mostly glad not to be the object of Steve’s scrutiny when he’s naked, covered in come, and also impaled on not one but two supersoldier dicks.

Each of which belong to Steve’s alters, and fuck, he’s not getting out of this one, is he?

He doesn’t mean to tense but he does, and god, he doesn’t know how he can be this full and not burst. He can’t help his moan, but he can’t take his eyes off Steve either, and he sees it, the tension in Steve’s body ratcheting up at the sound.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” It’s Grant, and he doesn’t sound nearly as composed as he did before he shoved his cock into Bucky. “We’re not doing anything he doesn’t fuckin’ want, Steve. Not our fault you didn’t give him what he needed.”

“Grant!” Bucky yelps because he doesn’t need this hole dug any deeper for him, Jesus.

He doesn’t know why he thought that would make a difference because Grant just doubles down, the bastard, though not before he tugs Bucky’s face to the side by the hair and kisses him like he wants to eat him whole.

Steve makes a high, startled noise like the kissing’s what shocks him, not Bucky being double-teamed by his doppelgangers.

“S’the fuckin’ truth,” Grant says, releasing Bucky’s mouth. They’re both panting. Grant’s mouth is shiny with spit. “Look at him, Steve, Christ. He’s made for this. You’ve been neglecting him, not taking care of him the way he needs. It’s a damn crying shame, isn’t it, baby?”

Bucky’s on fire, face and ass and his fucking chest.

Steven takes over, tugging Bucky into a deep and dirty kiss of their own, licking in like he wants to taste Grant in his mouth too.

Steve makes another noise, this one noticeable different than the one before. When Bucky tears his mouth away and looks at him, Steve’s cheeks are flushed a deep pink. There’s no mistaking how his eyes drop to Bucky’s kiss-swollen mouth and darken.

Oh.

It’s a familiar sight; Bucky’s seen it on Grant and Steven so many times this past week.

“Huh,” Steven says. He sounds smug, but there’s an undertone of strain too. Not like any of them can forget the position they’re in. “Looks like I was right.”

“I’d say so,” Grant says, kissing Bucky’s neck again.

Bucky doesn’t look away from Steve. Steve doesn’t meet his gaze, too caught up staring at Bucky’s mouth. It slips down sometimes, wandering down the rest of his body before darting guiltily back up.

“Steve,” Bucky calls, and there’s a plea in the name but damn if Bucky knows what he’s begging for.

“You can always join us.”

Bucky whips his head around to gape at Steven. Their faces are close enough that for a moment, all he can see is the blue-ringed black of his eyes, framed by insanely long lashes. Steven kisses him, quick but smiling into it.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Join us,” Grant echoes, lips brushing the back of Bucky’s neck. “C’mon. You want him. He wants you. Or you can just watch. Steven here’s into that, wouldn’t be surprised if you are too.”

Bucky makes an embarrassed noise but looks back at Steve, not quite able to help himself.

Steve’s expression is—it’s—god, Bucky doesn’t even know.

But Steve takes a step forward, almost like he can’t help himself.

“Bucky?” he calls, a question trembling in his name.

The moment of truth, isn’t it?

Bucky shifts, hissing when that makes the dicks inside him nudge along his walls. His body has molded itself to the insane stretch, the burn more of a low ache now. The serum’s something else, and Zola would be rolling in his grave to know that Bucky’s using his life’s work to cram supersoldier cocks, multiple, up his ass.

“Steve,” he says, finally catching Steve’s gaze and holding it. “Please. I want it.” A breath, shaky but calm as can be. “I want you.”

He can see the emotions flash across Steve’s face. He’s not as open a book as people make him out to be. The only emotion Steve shows without holding back is his anger. But Bucky’s always gotten the full show, and he’s getting it now, watching the lines of that dearly beloved face shift from shock to want to shock to doubt to awe and, finally, back to want.

He takes another step into the room, and this time, he doesn’t stop until he’s crossed over to the bed and has one knee on it. He stops then, wide-eyed like he can’t quite believe what he has done.

Bucky reaches for him, can’t help it and doesn’t want to.

Steve takes his hand in a daze, lets himself be pulled closer.

Their faces are close now. Steve’s eyes are more pupil than iris, glowing with what can only be desire. It feels like they’re the only two people in the world, even with Bucky sandwiched between Steven and Grant and stuffed full of cock.

“Kiss me,” he says, and Steve—

Steve does.

It’s chaste, tentative. He just presses his mouth to Bucky’s, a light pressure that’s all the more maddening for how good it feels. Because it’s Steve, because Bucky’s been wanting this since he was fourteen and staring mesmerized at his best friend’s bony wrist.

He makes a sound, low and needy. He grabs at Steve, curling his fingers into his collar.

Steve’s mouth opens against his, warm breath falling on Bucky’s lips. And then he’s kissing him, really kissing him, ravenous like he wants to suck Bucky’s soul out through his mouth. Bucky gasps into it, and Steve licks inside without hesitation, and god, the man can kiss, and Bucky’s soon just panting into it, clinging to Steve and Steven for dear life.

Steve pulls back, mouth slick and bitten red. He stares at Bucky like he’s a fucking revelation.

There’s a second where Bucky thinks he’s dreaming; even in his weirdest fantasies, he didn’t imagine his and Steve’s first kiss would be while Bucky’s the filling of an alt-Steve sandwich, but Jesus fucking Christ, that’s just how life is these days.

Steve kisses him again like he just can’t help himself, and somebody’s laughing. Bucky doesn’t care, he can do this forever, and that’s when Grant thrusts.

It’s the barest little movement, jolting Bucky on their cocks without either quite pulling out. He still feels it all the way down to his toes. It’s Steve mouth that he cries into, and there’s no way he’d have missed it, between the sound and Bucky’s full-body shudder.

“We were feeling a little ignored,” Grant says.

Steven just sighs.

Steve looks at the three of them, and he’s not wide-eyed and shocked anymore. The look on his face is one of familiar calculation.

Grant moves again, pulling out a little, and this time, Steven moves with him like they’re sharing a fucking brain, fucking up into Bucky though there’s nowhere deeper for him to crawl to. Bucky gets all of a second to register what they’re doing before they do it again, Steven pulling out and Grant thrusting in, impeccably coordinated.

And Steve watches while Bucky rocks on their cocks, holds his hand tight and doesn’t hide that he’s watching Bucky’s body shake and shudder and surrender to the building rhythm of the cocks inside him. Bucky wants to keep watching Steve, but it’s hard to keep his eyes open when Grant and Steven are pulling out further and pushing in harder with each thrust, bouncing Bucky between them. His cock’s hard again, but Bucky can’t bear to touch it, thinks he’ll come apart at the seams if he does. He clings to Steve’s hand and Steven’s shoulder, lets Grant feel up his chest and mouth at his neck.

The kiss takes him by surprise, eyes closed and mind dazed by how fucking full he is, how tight he feels stretched around two huge cocks. He knows it’s Steve, has learned his taste, and he knows it’s Steven’s mouth that follows, kissing him gently before his head’s turned mercilessly for Grant’s biting mouth.

Then Steve, again, tongue sliding in, hot and possessive, mapping out every inch of Bucky’s mouth. He gets drunk on it, sucking messily on Steve’s tongue as he’s fucked stupid.

It feels good, too good, every twitch and thrust pressing along his walls and ramming into his prostate, no room or give in how tight it’s all crammed into him. Bucky pants raggedly into the kisses he’s dragged into, whines when his nipples are pinched. He doesn’t know whose hand wraps around his dick, can’t pry his eyes open to look, but the touch drives the air out of his lungs. It’s good, slick and warm, just holding for a second, and Bucky knows whose it is, now, and then it starts moving, jerking him off in slow, firm pulls.

He starts sobbing, can’t help it, and it’s palpable, their hesitation.

“D-don’t stop,” he manages, slurring a little, and they don’t. They fuck him harder, Grant and Steven moving his body to their whims, thrusting in hard, then shoving him down, all the while Steve kisses him deep and strokes his dick, finding out all the things that make Bucky shout and shudder and beg for more.

It's the heat that does it; Grant pulls out as he comes, some of it drenching Bucky’s insides and the rest dripping out his hole and trickling down his thighs. Bucky comes with a whimper that Steve swallows, and the sticky wetness of his own release on his skin sets him off again, hole tightening around Steven’s cock like it’s not quite enough, while the rest of Bucky shakes apart.

It’s only their hands on him that keep him upright until Steven also comes, groaning, deep and wounded, as he adds to the mess inside Bucky.

It hurts when he slips out, Bucky’s rim swollen and throbbing around the sudden hollow ache.

They move him, after, hands all over him. Bucky wants to open his eyes and look, wants to see Steve and talk to him, tell him—doesn’t know what, but _tell him_ , but his lids feel glued together, his thoughts moving as slow as molasses.

He’s laid out on the bed, on his back, legs spread a little as if to allow for the mess leaking out of him.

Someone cups his cheek, and he expects a kiss, but nothing happens.

“Bucky.”

It’s Steve. Bucky can’t say how he can tell the three of them apart by just voice, but he can, and he’d never forget his Steve’s voice anyway, not again.

Lips press down on his eyes, first the right and then the left, lingering sweetly before Steve pulls away.

“You okay?”

The questions coaxes Bucky into opening his eyes. Steve’s bent over him, cheeks still red and mouth obviously kissed well. It’s concern in his eyes though. The others aren’t far off, hovering behind Steve.

“You didn’t come,” Bucky’s mouth says without his permission.

Steve looks nonplussed.

“I’m good,” Bucky adds belatedly. “You should—I can—”

“Aw,” Grant says, sounding legitimately moved. Figures. “Think he wants you to fuck him, Steve.”

“He can speak for himself,” Steve snaps. He doesn’t take his eyes off Bucky. He opens his mouth—

“You can fuck me.”

Steve’s mouth shuts with a click of teeth. He’s not subtle when he glances down Bucky’s body. He must be a mess, covered in come and shaking a little. And yeah, he doesn’t know what he’s thinking either, but what’s the use of being a fucking supersoldier if he can’t take dick until he passes out.

“Buck, you’re—”

“Fucked out?” Bucky suggests when Steve flounders. The peanut gallery snickers. Bucky flips them off without looking away from Steve. “I am. I can take more. I want this, god, Steve, I’ve wanted you since—”

He shuts the fuck up, mortified. Steve’s eyes grow wide and bright.

“I didn’t know,” he murmurs, and he doesn’t look someone gearing up to let a smitten friend in the kindest way. “Me too. Bucky, me too.”

“Oh. _Oh_.”

Steve kisses him then, and his mouth is confident, but his hands are still hesitant when they slide down Bucky’s jaw and neck to hover over his chest.

“Please,” Bucky gasps. “Steve, Stevie, please.”

“I–”

Steven grasps Steve’s hips and pulls him back. Steve lets it happen and he looks surprised when Steven starts unbuttoning his shirt, but he doesn’t stop him, even holds his arms back for the sleeves to be peeled off. He does make a sound when Grant helpfully starts on his jeans, but he doesn’t stop him either, just watches with wide eyes and a raging flush as Grant sinks to his knees and takes Steve’s jeans and underwear with him.

Bucky’s not the only one who licks his lips when Steve’s cock, not fully hard but far from soft, is exposed.

Grant rises to his feet in one, fluid motion and yanks Steve into a kiss.

Steve’s yelp isn’t wholly muffled by their mouths. He clutches at Grant’s shoulders, and Bucky doesn’t miss the minute flinch when he touches metal. Steve’s got no issue with Bucky’s prosthetic, but it’s another thing entirely, he imagines, when it’s his own body in another mold.

But fuck, but it’s a sight to see, Grant’s sheer bulk looming over Steve.

When they pull away, Steve’s mouth is parted and he looks pleasantly stunned. He glances over at Steven, almost unconsciously, and he gets a kiss from him too, though it’s more of a peck that the filthy tongue action Grant favors.

“He’s the narcissist, not me,” Steven remarks when he pulls back. He ignores Grant’s indignant protest and swats Steve on the hip, urging him towards the bed and Bucky. “Go, give us a show.”

“Voyeur,” Bucky quips, lazily watching the three settle themselves on the bed. God, three Steves in his bed, what is his life?

“That I am,” Steven agrees happily, perching on the edge of the bed the way he did the first time Grant fucked Bucky.

Steve settles between Bucky’s legs, spreading them with motions that are sure despite the uncertain expression lingering on his face. Grant sprawls close to Bucky’s hip, facing him but looking at Steve.

“Just—come on. In me. I don’t need prep,” Bucky says when Steve just sits there with his wide, wanting eyes. He lifts his legs, drawing them up. He almost loses his hold because getting rawed by two cocks has left him feeling a hell of a lot weaker than going toe-to-toe with Iron Man did, but Steve’s his hero there too, flattening his palms on the back of Bucky’s thighs and keeping them in place.

He's also staring at what the position reveals, blue eyes intent on the wet, well-used mess Bucky must be. He doesn’t look disgusted or even all that concerned. There’s want in his eyes, blatant and consuming.

“No, you don’t,” Steve says quietly, voice gone gruff just like that, and Bucky shivers all over.

Grant grins and slaps Steve’s shoulder. Hard. With his metal arm.

Steve starts and glares over at him. Grant’s smile turns sharp and sly.

“Better put your back into it, if you want him to feel it. S’all loose from us.”

“Oh god,” Steven says, sounding like he’s holding back a laugh.

Steve’s expression does something complicated before settling into one of familiar, hell-or-high-water determination. Bucky swallows thickly, because a competitive Steve Rogers is a force of nature, and it’s Bucky’s body he’s about to prove himself on.

He’s going to die.

But goddamn, it’ll be worth it.

Steve throws Bucky’s legs over his shoulder and thrusts into his sloppy hole, and Bucky doesn’t have the breath to scream but Jesus, he tries. Steve stops, all of him buried deep inside Bucky, and Grant was a lying liar because Bucky’s sure as fuck feeling it.

“You okay, Buck?” Steve asks, and it’s gratifying to hear him so wrecked from just being inside Bucky. But Bucky can’t find the breath to answer him, and Steve just stays there, still as a statue, even when Bucky tries to gather his trembling muscles into bearing down on him.

“Please,” he bursts out, sheer desperation giving him words. “Please, Steve, please, I’ve wanted so long, please don’t make me wait, Stevie, please.”

Steve looks stricken. And then the expression dissolves into something hot and tender.

He starts moving, hips pumping fast and sure, fucking Bucky hard enough to make him feel it in his gut, his chest, his throat.

It hurts, of course it does. He’s raw and sensitive from Grant and Steven, and his cock’s out for the count, but it feels good too, so good, each stroke of Steve’s cock sparking up his insides like bolts of lightning. Bucky watches as long as he can stand, not wanting to miss even a second of this. Steve’s face is twisted into lines of agonized pleasure, and Bucky feels that in his bones, but it’s too much, the sight and the sensation, and his eyes slip closed of their own accord.

That’s good too, Steve’s cock plunging in deep and making Bucky all his.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to just sink into it, let the world disappear.

-

Later, he wakes from a light doze and finds himself enveloped in warmth and oversized limbs.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. Sometime after Steve came in him and Grant kissed them both again, he thinks. That’s his last memory at least. He doesn’t remember being cleaned up, but he has been, dried and fresh semen both wiped off his body. Bucky worries about just checking like that, but shrugs it off. He’s taken more dick today than he has in the rest of his life combined, not counting the toys, and supersoldier dick at that because Bucky’s always been a bit of an overachiever. He’s earned a blissful blackout.

“Hey,” Steve says.

Bucky looks at him. Stares shamelessly. Touches his face, fingertips tingling at the warmth. This isn’t a dream, he knows, but it still settles at something to find Steve is warm and touchable.

“Ah, young love,” Steven says from behind Steve’s shoulder, and Bucky cranes his neck to stick his tongue out at him.

“I’m rubbing off on you,” Grant says from behind Bucky, sounding delighted.

“Literally, from what I’ve seen.”

There’s a slightly stunned silence as they all process _Steve_ saying that. Bucky doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Steve’s always adapted to anything and everything insanely fast, and he was born to be a little shit.

Grant’s the first to recover.

“Sadly, no. Not that I haven’t tried.”

“Like I said,” Steven says, dry but amused, “I’m not a narcissist.”

“Pity,” Grant says, and Bucky’s got to agree. He’d sure like to see that.

Grant presses closer to Bucky, kissing his nape gently. Bucky hums and doesn’t quite think, just turns his head, sighing happily when they kiss. He turns back, and Steven’s there, leaning over Steve for his turn.

When he pulls back, Steve’s staring at Bucky. His eyes are intense, but he’s smiling, and he doesn’t seem jealous, just pleased in a way Bucky can’t place.

They kiss, and it’s chaste like it’s their first time all over again.

“Not how I imagined our first time would be like,” Steve murmurs against Bucky’s mouth.

“You’ve imagined it?” Bucky asks, startled.

“Yeah,” Steve says, sounding shy all of a sudden. “Hoped even though I—well. Never thought you were interested. Now, well—haven’t you?”

“Of course I have. I’ve been gone on you since forever. Loved you all my life, Stevie.”

Steve’s eyes turn bright again, gleaming with tears that he blinks away.

“Me too, sweetheart.”

Silence falls as they stare at each other. It’s comfortable. It feels like home.

Steve always has.

“Would you like us to leave?” Steven asks. It’s an honest question, not a taunt or a reminder. He’s offering them privacy to talk this out, have their well-earned moment. And it’s sweet of him, but—

Steve frowns gently at Bucky, a question. Bucky shakes his head minutely.

“Stay,” Steve says, just as Bucky reaches back to grab hold of Grant’s arm and pull it over him. Grant makes a surprised sound but molds himself to Bucky’s back, holding him firmly. Bucky meets Steven’s startled expression and grins challengingly.

“What are you, our fairy godfathers? To get us together and then fuck off. Hell no. You assholes wrecked my asshole, you’re staying here and cuddling until I can walk without limping.”

Grant’s the only one who laughs. Steven just covers his face with one hand, and Steve looks both pleased and mortified.

“We’ll have to fuck off eventually,” Steven says. “These slips in reality don’t last that long. It’s been almost two weeks. We’ll get another, at most.”

That sobers Bucky a little. But he doesn’t feel sad. Steven and Grant have their lives to get to, people waiting for them. They have their own Buckys to go home to.

But he’ll miss them.

“But not yet,” Steve says, meeting Bucky’s eyes with warm understanding. “You’re here now. Let’s make the best of it.”

Grant almost crushes Bucky as he catches Steve in a kiss. It’s short, by Grant’s standards, but enthusiastic.

“I like you,” he says, pulling back.

Bucky laughs. Steve’s got a light in his eyes and red on his cheeks. They look at each other and smile, and Steve was right, this isn’t the way Bucky imagined their first time would be, but that doesn’t mean it’s not perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know your thoughts <3

**Author's Note:**

> kocuria really wanted this to be included here, and who am I to say no to art

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [collab: voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361448) by [kocuria-visuals (kocuria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals)




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